


Scenes from a revolution

by Deputychairman



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Finn finds his place in the galaxy, Huddling For Warmth, Jedi Rey, M/M, Poe Dameron takes depression naps, Revolutionaries In Love, Rey floats rocks, Sharing a Bed, defeating space!facism one planet at a time, maybe the invisible hand of the market was the real enemy all along, socialism in action, some of this happens in a hot spring, while coming to terms with the total destruction of the Resistance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-15
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-03-31 20:35:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13982862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deputychairman/pseuds/Deputychairman
Summary: The Resistance survivors light the fire, start a revolution, float some rocks, and fall in love





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know, it's more heavy-handed political metaphor - I think I've got to call it brand recognition strategy at this point and just embrace it. I mean what is even the point of sci fi if it isn't critiquing late-stage capitalism?  
> If there's a shadow of nuance in here then it's thanks to Galacticproportions and her clear-eyed understanding of how things affect other things, the correct hyphenation of X-wing, and other insights too numerous to list.  
> 

“Successful revolutions tear off masks: that is, they invalidate the conventions of self-presentation and social interaction that existed in pre-revolutionary society. In such upheavals, people have to reinvent themselves, to create or find within themselves personae that fit the new post-revolutionary society.” 

* * *

 

There is no Resistance any more.

Not as a military force, not as a political movement. An emotion, maybe, at best.

The Resistance is 20 people running for their lives, and Leia Organa doesn’t know what to do next. Oh, she has contingency plans, worst case scenarios she hoped never to need but always feared she would. None of them seem adequate to the loss, to lead her handful of survivors on. They need hope she can’t offer them.

What she needs now is a plausible way to keep going, but she is old, and tired, and grieving, and for the first time in her life she’s got nothing left to give.

All she has is both her instinctive and learned reaction to resist, resist, resist. Her parents died for it. Her husband died for it, though she’s sure he would deny it, if she could reach him in the afterlife. He’d say he’d taken a liking to the kid, or he thought there was money in it, or Chewie kept nagging at him till he agreed to do something. He’d be no help here, except in the way his performative apathy gave her something to react against, to crystallise all the ways in which she _did_ care.

Either way, he isn’t here, just like Luke isn’t here and Akbar isn’t here and Holdo isn’t here, and the only person she could turn to, the only person she could conceivably lean on, won’t look her in the eye.

_And whose fault is that, Leia Organa? Either you wanted him to succeed you or you didn’t, and if you wanted him to succeed you, you should have promoted him. You should have listened to him and adapted the battle plan accordingly, because he was right in the end. They came to wipe us out, they tracked us through hyperspace, and there wouldn’t be anybody left today if he hadn’t disobeyed you and taken down the Dreadnought._

There are a lot of things she would change, if she could.

Thought more carefully about her chain of command. Asked Poe Dameron what happened to him in the two days he was missing before he rolled off a Takodian freighter in his shirtsleeves looking like he’d been through hell and back, insisting he was fine.

He might even have told her, before, if she’d asked; now, not a chance. Now he says, “Yes, ma’am,” and calls her General, here at the end of everything, when none of that matters any more.

She would have gone with Rey, if she’d known it was the last chance she’d have to see her brother.

She’d have given up hope for Ben; really, truly, in her secret heart of hearts given up hope, if she’d known what he would do, what _his people_ would do. Hope is like the sun, and just like the sun, too much of it can kill you. You and the people you love.

*

“Where to?” Rey asks her. She’s all eager enthusiasm and idealism, nothing like Han, but by god she flies like him.

She’s so powerful, so young – as young as Leia was when she lost her homeworld and all the family she’d ever known. And now she’s old, and she’s lost all the family she’s ever known all over again.

“I don’t know, Rey. Ask him,” she says. Poe’s head half turns like he knows she means him, but he doesn’t look right at her.

He looks awful, hollow-eyed and unshaven, a bruise on his forehead and a cut under his eye. All the same, he can hold a room. People form a loose circle around him, listen when he speaks.

“It’s not giving up to lie low for a while,” he says. “We can’t fight the whole First Order in one ship, but we are not quitting. At least I’m not.”

A murmur of agreement goes around the survivors, and he stands a little straighter, only realising now that he has the floor.

“We said we’d be the spark. So now we light the fire. We need to find the places where there are people ready to fight back, where they have more to gain from standing up to the First Order than by giving in. Look for where their supplies are coming from, where their manpower comes from, and get in there first, get the people to organise. We can’t fight this with just us - ” he gestures at the motley group in the Millenium Falcon’s main cabin – “However good we are. There aren’t enough of us. But a spark doesn’t have to be big, it just has to be in the right place. It has to be where there’s tinder, right?”

Rey is standing behind Finn. They haven’t taken their eyes off Poe. Leia is listening too, but she isn’t watching him as much as she’s watching the others, the way they respond. They’re sitting up a little straighter, hanging on his every word.

He glances at Leia.

“Some of us can go with General Organa to where Lando Calrissian has offered refuge. Take some time, find out if any of our ships that scattered made it. Or if you need out for a while, then that’s fine too. This is for volunteers only.

“I’ve been looking at their supply lines, and a lot of their weapons viridian is coming from a place called Ikut, a mining planet kind of on our way. The government is in their pocket, making excuses not to hold elections and blaming outside agitators for the unrest. So let’s start there. They think they’ve got outside agitators, so I’ll give ‘em an outside agitator.”

Leia knows what Finn’s going to say before he says it. She’s seen him turn a little stiffly to whisper to Rey behind him, seen her nod, put her hand on his shoulder.

“You want some help agitating? ‘Cause I’m in,” he says.

“And me,” adds Rey.

Poe seems to glow for a moment with a smile she’d forgotten he had.

“Love some help, yeah,” he says.

“I’ll come too,” calls another voice, and Leia turns to see Rose Tico step forward, pale but recovering. Finn’s on his feet in a second, offering her his seat, and Rey’s holding out a hand, welcoming and introducing herself at the same time.

Poe spins on his heel, that smile still there, a piece of sincere public theatre to show these despairing survivors that there’s still a way forward. Leia’s so proud of him her heart aches.

“There we go then. Outside Agitator Squadron, reporting for duty,” he says. 

*

No way to speak to him alone before he leaves. She could ask outright and he’d probably agree; follow her to the empty cargo bay like he was going to his execution. So she doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t.

All she gets is a moment at the top of the ramp as he shoulders his pack, lets his droid go ahead and turns to glance back inside the Falcon one last time. And there she is, and he can’t pretend he hasn’t seen her.

“Good luck, Poe,” she says. “We’ll let you know if we hear anything about Black Squadron.”

He nods, meets her eye for a fraction of a second. “Thanks. Yeah.”

“And if we hear anything else that you need to know, or if you need anything from us, from me, you’ll call, won’t you?”

“Yeah, sure I will,” he says. “We’ll keep in touch.”

She was half expecting a message to pass on to his father, but that must have been entrusted to someone else.

It’s so uncomfortable she almost wants him gone, now, to put them both out of their misery.

She reaches out to – what, shake his hand? and he _flinches_ when her hand touches his arm. One of those involuntary reactions that someone with his reflexes hardly ever shows. She put her hand on Poe Dameron’s arm and he flinched away from her.

“Sorry,” he mutters, “I’m just - ” but he’s backing away as he speaks.

“Sorry,” she’s saying reflexively, her fingertips still registering the fabric of his sleeve, human warmth beneath it. Her reactions are slower than his: for just a moment she is left there with her hand outstretched as if still trying to touch him. Then she pulls it back too fast, clumsy like she never is, and doesn’t know what to do with her hands. A life in the public eye, and yet here she is, left wrong-footed and tongue-tied by her own – protégé, she was going to say, but it feels closer to the bone than that. Too close for her own good, and definitely too close for his.

“Be safe, Poe. Look after yourself,” she says, and then he’s turning, and he’s gone.


	2. Part 1

Ikut is a grey place where clouds touch the bare rock of the mountaintops and the sun never breaks through.

The climate isn’t extreme: no snow or ice, no destructive storms, just the constant leeching absence of warmth, a cold that gets into your bones like rot. Day after day rolls past in a half light, damp cool air seeping inside every layer of clothing Rey has.

“I take back everything I said about Jakku,” Finn mutters darkly, hands clasped around his caf to warm them. “It’s sunny, it’s hot, we were better off there.”

Rey doesn’t remind him of the desert nights, near-constant thirst, sand _everywhere_. Her makeshift home on Jakku retained the warmth of the day till morning, but this bare room the four of them share has no sun beating down on it to get them through the night.

The first night they lie separately on the sleeping platform that runs the length of one wall, Rey shivering so hard her shoulders start to ache, until beside her Rose sits up, announces:

“This is stupid. Rey, I’m gonna move next to you and put all my covers on top of your covers and then maybe we can sleep.”

Rey almost refuses. She won’t be able to sleep with another person so close, breathing in her face, touching her inadvertently. But she’s so cold that she doesn’t. She lets Rose dump the blankets over her, scoots up a little to make room for her. Rose settles on her side facing away from Rey, her back and shoulder a warm curve in the dark, and actually there’s plenty of space.

“This is much better,” Rey whispers to the back of her head.

“Back home, I always slept with my sister when it was cold,” Rose whispers back.

That first night, Rey didn’t know about Rose’s sister. Weeks and weeks later, Rose will drink a whole bottle of Corellian brandy and tell her all about Paige and how she died, and Rey will hold her hair back when she vomits all the brandy back up again and lie to the overseer about how her friend is sick in the morning. But for now she’s a stranger with warm feet who used to sleep next to her sister, and Rey doesn’t have any family at all.

From Finn and Poe, silence.

* * *

 

Living on a planet, renting a room, buying and preparing food: all this ordinary life is new to Finn. The routines and economics necessary to provide everything that he used to take for granted. If a spare set of clothes cost this much and the food costs that much and the room costs most of what’s left, what do you do next?

“We got credits for about seven, eight days,” Poe tells them, his elbows on the table. He has a two day beard coming in and the circles under his eyes are so dark it looks like someone hit him. “So we need to find work here.”

Obviously some shit went down, while Finn and Rose were off on their ultimately useless mission. Poe looks even worse than that day on the _Finalizer_. Or maybe he looks the same, only there wasn’t time then for Finn to see him: they were walking side by side, then they were back to back, and it was all so fast, and the terror, the exhilaration of it so overwhelming that all he retained was a voice, an outline, dark hair and blood, just enough to recognise him on that landing strip.

(“How many did they lose?” he asks Rey quietly when Rose and Poe can’t hear them.

“I don’t know,” she whispers. “Leia said some of them scattered, but… A lot. Most of them. She thinks a few hundred survived, and they used to be thousands.”)

“Uh, yeah. I’ve been a pilot all my life, but we’re looking for transferable skills here, I guess.”

“What?” Finn asks, but Poe just spreads his hands and shrugs.

“Do they hire pilots?” Rey asks.

“It’s a geothermal mining planet,” he tells her with a twist of his mouth. “Not much happening in the air.”

“Oh. Well. I’m – I suppose I’m a pretty decent mechanic,” Rey offers. “Most places need mechanics, don’t they?”

Rose says, “Yeah. Me too. Engineering, too, if it’s a system I know. And I do know the main mining systems, so yeah. They’ll definitely need us.”

“Um,” Finn begins. What _does_ he know that would be any use here? Military drills. Obeying orders, firing on civilians, not turning back for anyone. That’s what he was trained for. “I don’t know. I was in the First Order my whole life. They need any galactic domination here? Or any deserting? Running away?”

He’s joking, trying to get Poe to smile, but at the same time it’s _true._ What exactly does he have to offer here, where nobody needs combat skills? That’s all he knows. The Resistance as a fighting force was one thing, but now he’s signed up to this, he finds himself sorely wanting for the challenge ahead.

“Deserting and running away are good skills. They keep you alive,” says Rey. Her face is serious but when she adds, “I can also knock out almost anybody with a staff,” he realises she’s playing along.

“I can ride fathiers,” Rose chimes in. “And so can you, Finn.”

“And you’re good at rescuing people,” Rey adds.

Poe does look up now, tuning back in with a grin. “Yeah, I can vouch for that. I can be your – what do you call it, reference. I can give you a reference just by being alive.”

Finn knows it wasn’t like that, not really, but he can’t bring himself to undermine this image of himself Poe reflects back at him.

“And what about you?” Rey asks him.

The smile fades, then stabilises, Poe visibly putting on a brave face.

 

Rey and Rose are taken on as mechanics that same day.

Finn finds them in the cheapest cantina in town, already fast friends with the whole team of mechanics, Rose frowning over the contract terms as another woman explains. He hovers at the edge of the group, not wanting to draw attention to himself by interrupting.

“They take bathroom breaks out of our wages?” her voice rises, indignant, on the last word.

“Oh yeah,” the other woman tells her. “And broken equipment.”

“And even if they didn’t, your wages are never quite enough to make rent and eat – not unless you really like beans.”

Rey and Rose exchange a glance. “We’re not fussy about what we eat,” Rey says.

“Well, just don’t get sick then. Or pregnant.”

Of course that’s when Rey looks up and notices Finn, and then the whole table of women is laughing and teasing and making room for him as Rey shakes her head, still smiling.

 

“We’re gonna end up in the mines, buddy,” Poe tells him later, rubbing his eyes. “I mean, most of the planet works there, it’s a good place to make contacts, but…”

They’re sitting on their bunk, each wrapped in a blanket against the cold while they wait for Rey and Rose. Finn’s fingers are icy and he’s strangely aware of his own nose as a cold spot on his face.

“But?”

“Pretty high mortality rate, they tell me. Worker safety ain’t a premium down there.”

“Yeah, because Stormtroopers and X-wing pilots live long, accident-free lives.”

Poe snorts and raises his head. That’s the best Finn’s getting out of him these days.

“Nah, it’s just – you must be the same, man – but I’ve been an X-wing pilot my whole life. And I’m good at it. Was getting good at the clandestine side too, if you don’t count that whole getting captured on Jakku thing, which some great guy I just met sorted out for me anyway - ”

It’s not that he isn’t sincere, but sometimes Finn gets the feeling Poe is being nice to him as a diversion. From what, Finn doesn’t know, and it makes every word he says in response heavier, working to respond to both the words he hears and the ones behind them that he doesn’t.

Sometimes he can’t resist the compliment, the glow of who he wants to be that Poe’s offering him as if he was already there. A _great guy_ who saved Poe Dameron, knowingly completed his mission, none of the terrified stumbling into the unknown that Finn remembers. But this time he doesn’t take the diversion.

“Yeah, yeah, it is the same for me,” he says. “I was good at that military stuff they made us do: the tactics, battle sims, hand to hand – all of it. But me and a blaster is never gonna be enough to take them down, and I don’t know how to do anything else.”

Poe nods. When he looks down, his eyelashes almost touch his cheek. “You’re adapting pretty fast, though.”

Finn lets his shoulder brush Poe’s when he shrugs. Is he? There hasn’t been a single moment with enough stillness to ask himself the question, just dizzying crisis and swooping disaster lit up with points of light that are Rey, Poe, Rose. He doesn’t even know how long it’s been since he marched Poe out of that cell, pulled his helmet off without looking back. He’s been unconscious, his sleep has imitated unconsciousness. Maybe this is what adapting looks like.

“You think?”

“Yeah, of course. Wait. Aren’t you?” Poe turns, pulls his knees up so he’s facing Finn, the full force of his attention suddenly switched on.

It’s not threatening - Poe moved slowly, his voice is light, friendly - but some animal response in Finn makes his heart thump with unease. If he isn’t adapting, what does that mean? Is he still one of _them?_ If Poe is a pilot even without a ship, is Finn still a Stormtrooper even though he’d die before he’d go back _?_ Or is that what makes the difference - Poe still wants to be a pilot, to fight for what he’s fought for all along, but Finn wants - he doesn’t know what he wants, it never mattered before, what he wanted. He’s had no practice at it. Identifying a desire, a goal for himself, and working to achieve it is something he’s never done. There was what the First Order wanted, and there was what was right, and there was no room between those impossible contradictions for wanting anything.

“I don’t know. I’m - it’s just all really different,” he confesses. “Being here, living like this. In a room with you. I’ve never done any of this before. I don’t know how anything works, and I’m just - blundering round, trying to blend in. Act like I know what I’m doing.”

He hadn’t meant to say that. If Poe thought he was adapting, why disillusion him?

“I’ll let you into a secret, buddy,” Por says, putting a hand on his shoulder. _“Everybody’s_ just acting like they know what they’re doing.”

“Even you?” If Poe’s just acting, then he’s very very good at it.

Poe expels a breath that might be a laugh.

“Oh yeah. You think I know how to overthrow a government?”

Finn blinks at him. He honestly hasn’t considered it: Poe appears confident in his own abilities, and he’s right to be as far as Finn can see.

“Actually, now that you ask, I guess I thought you did, yeah. It just seems like the sort of thing you’d know how to do.”

Poe brightens at that. “Hey, thanks, man.”

“That’s a compliment?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“No, yeah. I guess it was.”

“Sounded like one. ‘Cause I was gonna say, you too. Stealing their prisoner and a ship, taking down their Star Killer shields - those are related skills, man. They thought they had you brainwashed and compliant, and then: boom!”

“You think?”

“Oh yeah. You make up your own mind. About everything.” There’s admiration in Poe’s voice: no doubt that this is a compliment.

It takes some getting used to, though. To think of something that would have got him reconditioned before as a quality to be _proud_ of. Maybe he’s out of the First Order, but sometimes it feels like the First Order will never be out of him.

* * *

 

BB-8 wakes them in the morning with a chorus of beeping that doesn’t sound anything like the desert birds Rey woke to all her life, but it fills the same role. She likes it better, too. Those desert birds would have you for carrion if they could.

Finn is always the first up, wrapped in a blanket against the cold. The first couple of days she actually heard a gasp as he woke, then a burst of activity as he scrambled straight out of bed and into the refresher. She was still warm next to Rose, the covers right up to her nose, and would have stayed there but that catch of his breath and sudden movement speak of panic. If Finn’s panicking, there’s probably a good reason for it.

But if there is a reason, it’s one he keeps to himself.

Those first days, he waits for her to make caf, watching her hands measure out the grounds and twist the halves of the thermopot together. She’s too sleepy to mind the scrutiny or make anything of it, until she’s poured caf into two battered mugs and is sitting across the table from him it hits her that a little machine like this one, that makes just enough for two, might be something he’s never used before. He doesn’t talk much about his life before, and she doesn’t ask. None of them talk much about the past.

The next morning she makes her movements clear and deliberate so Finn can see how each piece fits together as he leans against the counter watching. It’s not like it’s hard, but she remembers the first time she encountered a device like this, the 5 minutes of painful frustration until it all fell into place, how the heat interacts with the water, forces it up through the grounds and into the upper chamber. Rey’s good with machinery, and it still rankles how slow she was to understand. If she can spare Finn that then she will.

Sure enough, on the fourth day he’s the first awake again, and this time she hears the sound of the little thermopot being filled, fitted together, and as she stumbles out of bed to keep him company she can already smell caf, steaming and fragrant, as the liquid begins to bubble up.

“Thank you very much,” she says, stupidly formal, when he hands her a mug. She can’t say _I really appreciate being the first person you made caf for and it means a lot to me_ without embarrassing him, so she sits at the table with him in sleepy silence with her heart very full.

“Will someone make some for me?” Rose calls plaintively, face muffled in the pillow. “Please?”

From Poe there’s silence. He doesn’t stir until BB-8 trundles right next to him with a cheerful barrage of electronic chatter, and then he only mutters, “ _Quiet_ beeps, buddy.”

There’s nothing but dark curls and the angle of one eyebrow visible until Finn leans over him, mug in hand, and touches what must be his shoulder under his mountain of blankets. Rey isn’t watching them, but she’s not _not_ watching either. There’s a sort of tension she can’t name that draws her eye.

“Hey,” Finn says softly. “Poe, you awake? I made you caf.”

Poe stirs, blinks up at him. “You made me caf?” he repeats, voice still thick with sleep.

“Yeah. Here -” Finn holds out the mug, waits while Poe unwinds himself from the blankets and leans up on one elbow to accept it.

Poe takes a sip and looks up at him. “Finn,” he says fervently, “Finn I love you, man. BB, you see this? _This_ is how to wake someone up. Finn, you’re - ” he takes another sip, doesn’t finish.

It’s not quite what Finn wants to hear. When Poe closes his eyes again, he looks over to exchange a look with Rey. But she can’t help him. She barely knows Poe. Maybe this is how he is, a bright unbreachable barrier protecting him from the rest of the world. It’s not the worst idea she ever heard. Better than lashing out, or hiding alone to scavenge in the desert.

* * *

 

It’s the cold that gets to Poe the most. That’s what he tells himself. He grew up on a warm planet, dense with flowers and climbing plants, where the cloud cover brought gentle rain then cleared away for intense sunlit colours. In an X-wing it’s never cold, and even the shoestring Resistance base on D’Qar was tolerable. He never noticed the temperature there, so it must have been fine.

Here, it’s a fight with his worst self to throw off the blankets every morning. If he didn’t have witnesses to shame him out of bed with their cheerful lack of condemnation, he might not get up at all. He could let their voices wash over him, sink back into sleep to the call and response of Finn’s deep rumble, the women’s lighter notes preceding, following, overlapping, speaking over each other. They’re all so fucking _young_ , and he’s a thousand years old. All he wants is to sleep.

But he has responsibilities. To the three people he’s sharing this room with, to the idea of the Resistance, to the fucking galaxy. If Poe Dameron has the power to do something, however small, and chooses not to do it because it’s _cold_ , what sort of man does that make him? Not the sort of man Shara Bey would be proud of, that’s for sure. Not the sort of man Finn would make caf for in the morning either. Finn even starts bringing it to him in bed, sometimes sitting down beside him as he drinks it, making undemanding conversation until Poe finally shakes off sleep enough to have something to say in response. Once he inadvertently meets Rose’s eye only for her to look away, suppressing a smile.

He can’t let Finn wait on him without reciprocating somehow, so once he does drag himself up he washes the mugs in water that’s rarely more than tepid.

“This place is geothermal, and those have got to be water pipes,” Rey says one evening, pointing out the huge pipes that run across the back wall at floor height. “So why is there no hot water?”

“Yeah, and why is there no fucking _heating?_ ” Poe mutters.

He’s not really expecting an answer, but it turns out Rose has one.

“Market forces,” she spits the words out like they’re dirty. “The mining company bought the springs, and now they sell the hot water back to the workers. Only they charge so much for it that only the bosses can afford it, so it doesn’t come through these pipes any more.”

“Huh. Figures.”

“It’s what the First Order always do. Run a planet into the ground until people are too busy just surviving to fight back.”

“There must be a workaround though.” Rey eyes the pipe critically, hands on hips. “An access point somewhere we could get into, divert part of the supply…”

When they come back night has fallen, and they are almost vibrating with glee, bursting in the door in a whirlwind of enthusiasm.

Poe is cocooned under all his blankets with a datapad, neck aching from holding the thing as he pours over the list of recent trade deals the Ikut government has signed. Finn is under his blankets too, leaning against the cold wall and reading a history of the fall of the Empire. Poe’s pretty sure he’s sitting up on purpose so that Poe can’t see what he’s reading, as if anyone expected him to have picked up a balanced view of galactic history growing up in the First Order. But he’s sensitive about the gaps in his knowledge, so Poe doesn’t ask.

“Guys! Grab a towel and a change of underwear, we have got to show you something!”

“Finn, you’re gonna love this - ”

Finn pushes off his blankets, leaps to his feet. “You found an access point?”

“We found something even better! Arit showed us, we just came back to get you. And towels. Come on – Poe, come on, get up!”

It’s like there’s a pane of glass around him. He can see Finn catch their excitement, shove his feet into his boots and start rummaging through their sparse possessions for a towel. He’s asking questions over his shoulder as Rey leaves everything scattered on her side of the sleeping platform, shaking out a towel triumphantly. But the feeling isn’t reaching him, cut off from the others so that he can see and hear them but nothing important gets through. He’s barely warm enough as it is. Coming out from under these blankets, going somewhere they will have to get wet?

“You go ahead. I’ll stay here,” Poe tells them, and they all turn at once.

“What? No!” Rose exclaims.

“What are you talking about? You can’t miss this!”

“Poe? You ok?” Finn asks. He sits back down next to Poe, puts a hand on his ankle that Poe can feel even through all the layers of blankets. Finn is looking at him, head on one side, a tiny frown line between his eyebrows, as if he could find out what was wrong just by looking hard enough.

“Yeah, sure. Just tired, that’s all.”

Rey is there on his other side too, saying, “Poe, it’s a hot spring you can swim in! Hot water! Really hot! You’ve got to come!”

And there’s Rose, too, nodding energetically. “They showed us, it’s amazing!”

Even BB-8 joins in, beeping accusingly at him from the floor.

Finn’s hand is still on his ankle. “We can’t go without you,” he says, and he actually looks worried. A second ago Finn was alive with delight, and Poe’s already brought the mood down. He could dig his heels in, plead the weight of command and this trade dossier Leia sent and they’ll back off, but they won’t really believe him. He’ll just make it into a _thing_ if he refuses. And besides, he isn’t really here to hide in his room. If they want to be the spark, he’s actually got to get out there and talk to people.

“Ok, ok, ok,” he says, pushing the blankets aside with an exaggerated sigh. “I don’t wanna spoil the party. Let’s go,” and they explode with delight, whooping and cheering.

If only it were always this easy to make people happy.

They would never have found these springs on their own. Arit is waiting for them next to a rusted door in a long dark corridor that looks like there are spiders and forgotten cleaning supplies on the other side of it. But when she opens it, the door swings open easily on silent hinges, revealing a flight of shallow steps leading down into the rock.

It gets gradually warmer and warmer as they go down, until the stairway opens out into a wide room. Hooks in the stone walls are hung with a dozen or so sets of workers’ clothing and there’s a low arch at the far end. The light is so dim he can only make out the clothes once they’re up close: in the gloom, Poe’d thought for a second she was leading them into an ambush, that these were shadowy robed figures waiting to seize them with a flick of the hand and drag them away. He has _got_ to get a grip.

“Leave your clothes here – anywhere you can find a space,” Arit gestures. “And come through.”

Steam hangs in the air, reducing the visibility even further, and it’s warm enough that the idea of getting undressed isn’t anything like as horrific as it would be back in their room. Careful not to watch Rey or Rose, and especially not to watch Finn, he turns to face the wall to pull his clothes off with slow hands, taking off layer after layer until he’s stripped down to his shorts and the chain around his neck, amazed at the sight of his own bare skin.

He doesn’t look around until Finn calls out, “Poe? You coming?”

Finn’s waiting for him by the archway, feet angled as if he had been about to follow Rey and Rose and Arit. But here he still is. Poe sees him, in one glance takes in the expanse of his chest, broad shoulders and the well-defined muscles of his arms. Out of the very corner of his eye he catches the contrast of pale shorts against dark skin and fixes his gaze safely on Finn’s face.

Heat envelops them as they step through the arch and into an even darker space, lit only by a faint glow from the water that laps against smooth stone walls. Steam hangs so thick the air is almost solid, and it’s only from their voices that he can be sure it’s Rose and Rey going gingerly down the steps into the glowing water ahead of them, holding on to each other as the water reaches their waists. Another step and they’re just shapes in the gloom, a blur of pale shoulders and dark hair gliding towards Arit and the distinctive shape of her coiled braids. Overhead, he has the impression of a domed roof, the echoes of water and Rose’s laugh of delight refracting back in a complex curve of sound.

Finn pauses at the top of the steps, looks around to make sure he’s following before putting one bare foot carefully into the water.

“Wow, it’s so _warm!_ ” he exclaims, then laughs at himself. “Ok, that was a dumb thing to say. It’s a hot spring. Course it’s gonna be warm.”

Poe shakes his head. “Nuh-uh, I’ve been cold so long it is never gonna be dumb to tell me when something’s warm. We could end up back on Jakku and you could tell me it’s warm and I’d still be glad to hear it.”

“Ha. You say that _now,_ ” Finn retorts.

“Yeah, you’ll say, _hey Poe, it’s really warm here_ , and I’ll be, _sure is, buddy! Thanks for telling me!_ ”

Finn laughs and grabs Poe’s arm to steady himself as he goes another step deeper into the water, then another. Poe follows him in, blissful hot water reaching his knees, then his thighs, hips. They both gasp as it reaches all the way up to chest height, an intimate shared breath that has them smiling irresistibly at each other.

Poe’s tingling all over, all the nerve endings in his body singing in delight, delicious heat caressing every inch of him. Weeks, months, have passed since he felt this good. He’s been so cold for so long, all the time, from the moment he wakes up to BB’s beeping and Finn’s caf until he finally falls asleep, and this is like religion, like Coruscant opium. Inappropriately sensual, almost: such intense physical pleasure reminds him of that swoop at the top of a dive, or the approach of orgasm. He ought to be alone, not letting Finn hold his arm and hearing his breath hitch.

Finn pulls him further in to the pool, moving in unpredictable fits and starts that have Poe jostling him, colliding in slow motion with a silken slide of skin under the water. The stone floor they’re wading across is smooth but not perfectly even, deeps and shallows dipping and climbing unseen, reminding them that they are inside the living rock. Yet there’s nothing claustrophobic or stifling about it, not with hot water surrounding him, buoying him up like an apology for all these weeks of cold. Nurturing, like the planet wants them here.

Poe bends his knees, lets the water come all the way up to his chin.

“I’ve never been anywhere like this,” Finn whispers. “Look at the water! Why is it glowing?” He holds his hand out in front of him, fingers silhouetted in the turquoise water. Bright droplets gleam against his skin as he raises his arm, winking out as they roll off him.

“Dunno. If we can find Arit, she’ll know.”

They can hear female voices, but in the dark and the steam they can’t quite make out where they’re coming from. The pool opens out, an unknowable organic form in the rock, limits impossible to gauge. A phosphorescent space of blissful heat buoying them up, relaxing muscles gone rigid from hunching against the cold for so long. Poe leans back, spreads his arms and lifts his feet so that he’s floating in the bright water, looking up into clouds of vapour that reflect the blue light back down at them.

With his eyes closed everything disappears: water fills his ears, bringing him ponderous, distorted sounds, the transformation of movement and voice and settling stone into something strange, almost melodic. If he stayed like this for long enough he might be able to understand what the sounds mean, translate drops of water into language, subterranean currents to answer all his questions. He kicks one leg and the water tells him what sound his foot makes; Finn moves closer, and his body is deep; urgent; a message Poe can’t quite make sense of yet.

He lets his feet sink back to the stone underfoot, and stands again. Normal sound rushes back; water streams from his hair.

“Stay close or we’ll lose each other,” Finn says, and Poe’s probably imagining the anxious note in his voice. He isn’t imagining Finn’s hand clasping his own, anchoring him.

“Ok, sure,” he says. Everything is different down here; why shouldn’t he let Finn hold his hand?

Oron from the mine recognises them in the steam, smiles and misinterprets their joined hands with a quirk of his eyebrows. It seems too complicated to explain, so Poe doesn’t. Neither does Finn, for his own reasons that Poe can’t even guess at.

“Heat is good for your back,” Oron tells Finn – in the mine, they know all about each other’s injuries by now.

“Yeah,” Finn sighs, flexing his shoulders. His skin shines, muscles rippling like waves. Poe swallows, catches himself biting his lip when it’s too late to stop.

“It’s even darker back that way if you wanna give him a massage,” Oron says, face deliberately innocent. The silence stretches out a beat too long as neither of them answer.

Poe’s all too aware of their near nakedness, that shared gasp as they slid into the water, Finn’s hand in his, every time they’ve glided into each other and not rushed to put the distance back. The idea of more, of touching him, is suddenly both palpable and unbearable. Everything he wants, and totally impossible.

Finn lets go of his hand. “Ha ha, thanks for the tip, but - ”

The water is just as warm as before, the light and the echo both intimate and otherworldly. Finn doesn’t touch him again, and the new space between them is more important than any of it.

* * *

 

“Your friends saved Oron’s _life_ today,” one of the miners tells Rey when she and Rose come looking for them, one day they don’t come home at their usual time.

His emphasis leaves it uncertain if this is a physical, literal saving of life, some mining accident averted; or instead one of the ways the mechanics look out for each other. Swearing blind someone is working on the other machinery when she’s missed, finishing her work for her when she’s sick. Sharing food. Not life-saving in the moment, maybe, but in the long run these are the things that keep people alive.

They’re in the cantina, with the man she recognises as Oron, an empty bottle on the battered table between them. Huddled close together, but they slide up even further, find another chair to make room for Rey and Rose.

“No, wait: we need another bottle! I’m gonna get another bottle,” Poe announces, lurching to his feet just as they sit down. He stumbles pushing his chair back, Finn reaching up to steady him even as he catches himself on Finn’s shoulder.

“You need a hand?”

“I’m good,” Poe says, squeezing his shoulder.

Oron fixes Finn with a look then turns to Rey.

“Ok - Rey, is it? And Rose? Hey, good to meet you. So listen, I have a question - ” he glances at Finn again, back to Rose, then Rey. “You know Finn and Poe pretty well, right? So tell me: what is the deal with these guys?”

“Pardon?” says Rey.

“The deal?” repeats Rose.

Oron’s grinning at Finn. “Yeah. The deal. Now Finn here, he says nothing’s going on, him and Poe are just friends. You know, friends who _really_ care about each other. Friends who touch each other a lot.”

Rey hadn’t thought about it. How the four of them fit together in different combinations: Finn is the person it feels like she has known all her life; Rose and Poe are friends of his, and now they’re friends of hers. The intricacies, the shape and extent of those friendships, are a whole world she hasn’t explored. It never even occurred to her.

“And you practically tripped him up so he’d fall into your arms just now, so I’m putting two and two together, and…”

“I did not!” Finn protests, and while it’s true that he didn’t trip Poe, Oron’s observation isn’t exactly wrong either. She looks at Finn curiously, recalculating the soft rumble of his voice in the morning waking Poe with caf, their casual hands on each other. The way they don’t share their blankets.

“What, is he spoken for? No, wait: he’s interested in someone else.”

Rose scoffs, shoots a glance behind her to make sure Poe’s still out of earshot.

“That guy’s not interested in anyone. I’ve seen people try, and he never even notices they’re flirting with him.”

Oron leans forward, face alight with interest, just at Finn folds his arms across his chest and leans back. His expression is totally blank.

“So I wouldn’t be stepping on anyone’s toes if I asked him to have a drink with me?”

“He’s already having a drink with you,” Finn says flatly, and Oron tips his head back and roars with laughter.

“I’m sorry my friend, but you’re just too easy to mess with! He’s all yours, take your time. You’ll get there.”

 

Rey slips her arm through Finn’s as they stumble back to their room, slows her pace to let Rose and Poe get ahead. Sound carries in this stone city, even with the constant hum of the mine.

“Are you ok?” she asks. “You didn’t like what Oron said, about you and Poe…”

Finn shrugs. “I just feel stupid. I didn’t mean to be – trying anything with him. Of course I like him, but…”

“He’s very likable,” Rey agrees.

“But I don’t want to make him uncomfortable or anything. Do you think I – do what Oron says I do?”

Rey squeezes his arm, watches the cloud her breath makes in the cold air. It’s hard to imagine anything more different from her life on Jakku.

“I’m not very good at noticing things like that,” she says.

“Me neither,” says Finn. “That’s the problem.”

* * *

 

Rey and Finn get sick on the same day. Rey doesn’t get up to drink caf with Finn - that’s the first warning sign. He doesn’t worry about her, though, not right away. He slows his movements to give her time to wake up, makes a little more noise than he normally would, but the thermopot bubbles and there’s still no movement from Rey.

When she finally crawls out of bed her eyes are glittering, a fever flush of colour across her cheekbones.

“I feel strange. Bad, actually,” she rasps.

Rose regards her with obvious alarm, presses a hand to her forehead. “You’ve got a fever, Rey,” she says, darting a worried glance at Finn.

Rey seems to think about this, blinking at them owlishly before she says: “I just need to lie down again for a minute,” and collapses back onto the bed.

Finn and Rose between them pull the covers out from under her and tuck them up around her chin.

“Is it serious? What do we do?” Finn asks. No one ever got sick in the First Order, not that he remembers. In a highly contained and sanitised environment like that, even viruses have a hard time breaking in.

Now here’s Rey, who could fight off three men twice her size, work magic with the Force and face down Kylo Ren, knocked out by something they can’t even see. He’s always taken her strength and power for granted: curled up like this, she seems smaller, younger. A girl who’s sick, and he doesn’t know how to help her.

Poe sits beside her, leans over and smooths the hair out of her face, but Finn can see he’s doing what Rose did, judging her temperature from touch. It seems imprecise as a measure, but Poe’s jaw is set when he looks up at them.

“Hey, Rey, can you tell me what’s wrong? Do you feel sick? Does your throat hurt?”

She nods against the pillow.

“Can I see your arm? You got a rash or anything?”

She makes a movement that’s probably a shrug that didn’t come off.

Poe motions BB-8 to come closer, his face clearing a little as he listens to the droid’s report.

“Hear that, Rey? You don’t have Deadly Yellowfoot, Dagobah Fever or Necrotic Flu, so that’s good,” Poe tells her in the _I’m not going to hurt you_ voice he uses for people who are afraid. “But BB doesn’t know what you _do_ have, so…”

“M’okay,” she mutters. “Just sick. I don’t think I can go to work, though.”

“No, you’re definitely not going to work,” Poe agrees.

 

At the meal break Finn rushes back to check on her. She’s asleep, he thinks, but when he leans over her she stirs and smiles at him, a feeble, unconvincing thing.

“How are you feeling?” he whispers.

“Not so good,” she says. “Thirsty.”

“Stay there, I’ll get you more water.”

She drains the glass in one, so he refills it and puts it down where she can reach it. She doesn’t seem to notice when he leaves to get back to his shift before he’s missed. They’re already down Rey’s wages today.

 

As the day wears on, Finn finds it harder and harder to swallow. It must be the dust, so he doesn’t mention that his throat feels like he swallowed glass and his skin prickles with itchy heat.

“You ok?” Poe asks him, peering at him in the underground gloom when they pass each other.

Finn plasters on a smile. “Fine!” he says, and Poe squeezes his shoulder and grins back. It’s probably nothing, and what can Poe do anyway? Put that concerned hand to his forehead, and worry about him? There are a lot of things Poe can do, but healing the sick with the touch of his hands isn’t one of them.

He has to stop and rest half way up with his load. It’s not even particularly heavy: he does this 10 times a day and never has to take a break. That’s when he starts to get scared. He might be here for different reasons from the other miners, but in the end he needs to be able to work as badly as they do.

A couple of guys stop to ask if he’s ok, and some instinct he didn’t know he had kicks in and make him swear that he is. He even manages to get up and drag the damn trolley back to the top. But one of them must have said something to Poe, because he sits down to rest just for a second and when he opens his eyes it’s to see Poe’s anxious face in front of him.

They’re at the bottom of a viridian mine: there’s nowhere to retreat to and pretend his eyes aren’t burning and his head isn’t spinning, so he just blinks and blinks and waits for whatever Poe’s gonna say. If pushed, he couldn’t say where this horrible bubble of anxiety comes from, why he’s trying to pretend he’s not sick. Or maybe he could, but it has nothing to do with his friend crouched in front of him, concern written in every line of his body.

Poe transparently cares how he is, but Finn is the man the First Order made him: showing weakness is dangerous. Maybe nothing comes of it the first time, but once people have got used to someone not keeping up, coming last, needing help, then they will always be at the bottom of the heap.

“Finn,” Poe says, in that same gentle voice he used on Rey this morning. “You don’t look so good. Are you sick?”

“Maybe,” Finn admits, and Poe’s reaching out to feel his forehead, hand looming dusty into his vision then landing cool and comforting where his skull throbs.

“Shit, buddy, you’re burning hot!” he exclaims. Pulling Finn to his feet, he continues, “C’mon, you’re done for today. We’re only just short of clocking off anyway – we’re gonna go home, and make sure Rey’s got everything she needs, and you can lie down, and then I’m gonna go find a med droid, even a godforsaken place like this has gotta have one med droid, and you’ll be just fine in a day or two…”

Maybe he’s talking more for his own benefit as he wraps an arm round Finn’s waist to steady him and steers them up and out. The supervisors see them: one guy, who’s always been ok, just nods at Poe and waves him out, but the other yells, “Where do you think you’re going?”

“He’s sick,” Poe says shortly, not even pausing.

“Shift ain’t over yet.”

“Yeah, well it is for us,” Poe snaps back. “He can’t work and he can’t walk, so I’m taking him home.”

“If you can afford to lose both your wages, knock yourself out.”

This close, Finn can see the muscle in Poe’s jaw clench as he grinds his teeth.

“We worked most of the day. You owe us that.”

“Ha ha, you think? I think the contract says if you leave before the end of the shift, you don’t get shit.”

Poe squares his shoulders, tightens his grip on Finn and keeps walking.

“That guy’s gonna be first against the wall,” he mutters, and Finn’s too exhausted to ask him what he means.

 

He doesn’t remember a lot about the next day or two.

Poe isn’t there for a while and then he comes back with a med droid. Something cold and metallic touches him, and he knows he’s being scanned.

“Human male aged 23 standard years: viral infection Arakon fever detected,” the scanning sound continues, unpleasantly shrill.

Finn turns away from the light it shines in his eyes and there’s Poe next to him, that cool touch on his face again and murmuring, “Hey buddy, nearly done, hold still just a second and you can go back to sleep.”

The droid is saying something about standard vaccination programmes and missing doses, and then Rose is speaking sharply, saying, “Hey, hey! You can take that vaccine scan off the bill right now, we never asked you for that.”

BB-8 makes a disbelieving noise and she continues, “Yeah, it’s in the protocol. Screw more money out of sick people when they can’t argue with you. But not us, _sparky_. You’re gonna show me an itemised bill and play me back the recording of this whole conversation to prove it before we give you a single credit.”

Then Poe’s helping him sit up – there must be some time missing, because it’s light again – and making him drink something bitter, holding water to his mouth to take away the taste when he’s done.

It’s dark again and there is a holo glowing in the middle of the room, Poe and Rose hunched close and General Organa’s voice echoing strangely in this place he doesn’t associate with her.

“No, neither of them. Rey only the early childhood shots. Finn up to 18 and then nothing, like it wasn’t worth it to vaccinate them when - ” he coughs, continues low and intense. “We owe them this, Leia.”

“Yes. Alright. I’ll get you your money.”

“It’s not _my_ fucking money! I had all my shots – the New Republic gave _us_ great medical care, you and me!”

Leia raises her voice. “I’m not arguing with you, Poe, I’m agreeing with you! Of course we owe them this - we owe them much more than this, and I am sending it now!”

A silence. Poe in a different tone saying, “Ok. Yeah. Sorry, they’re really sick and we’re – I overreacted.”

General Organa says something back, quieter, that he can’t hear.

“No, it’s fine. We’re fine. I’m fine,” Poe says, and even to Finn he doesn’t sound very convinced.

But still, compared with his life before, where nobody would have touched his forehead in concern, or put him to bed, or pleaded for money for medication like they actually cared about the outcome – yes, by every possible measure that matters to him, this is better. At least, it is for him.

Later the med droid comes back, and Rose stands over it scrutinising something before letting it near him. A brief sting to his upper arm, and Rose’s voice saying, “That was the antiviral, Finn. You’ll start feeling better soon, I promise.”

There’s something almost luxurious in giving in to illness and slip in and out of sleep, lulled by BB-8’s electronic chatter, Rose’s quiet voice telling Poe something about the mining conglomerate. Nobody expects anything from him: he doesn’t have to keep up or pretend. He can forget about why they’re really here on this planet he’d never heard of and where he has nothing to contribute, and just drift.

* * *

 

Mechanics get paid more than miners, so it’s Poe who stays with Finn and Rey, and Rose who goes to work. They’re gonna struggle until Leia’s money reaches them: not many luxuries left they can cut back on. They’ll have to make two days’ food last for six, somehow.

“Maybe we have to leave them alone,” Rose says, voice tight and miserable, and Poe knows they can’t. The med droid swore the worst would be over in 48 hours with the antivirals it gave them, but for those 48 hours Finn and Rey are horribly sick. They need help getting to the fresher, to sit up to drink. Someone there when they wake up, disoriented, and cry out.

“No,” Poe decides. “We can’t leave them alone yet. Leia’s sending credits for the vaccinations, we can make it. They’re hardly eating, I don’t need as much when I’m not burning calories shifting rocks. We’ll be ok.”

The worst part is knowing that most people here don’t have a well-connected former senator to call when they need money. He knew that already, of course he did: the galaxy isn’t fair. His peacetime childhood on Yavin 4 where he never went hungry, was never in any real danger, brought up by parents who loved him, was a privilege not the norm. Flying for the New Republic fleet might not have been safe, exactly, but if he compares his young adulthood to Finn’s, or Rey’s, or even Rose’s, it looks almost utopian. A military force he thought he believed in that valued his skills, trained him to develop them; that fed him, paid him, promoted him, and ultimately let him leave.

Poe has a lot of time to think about that while Finn and Rey sleep, and he hates it.

He can’t shake that feeling of responsibility, that his comfortable childhood somehow came at the expense of Finn’s. The New Republic was better than the Empire: for his parents’ sake, for Leia, he has to believe that. But there was a lot they didn’t see, or didn’t want to see, until it was too late.

And now here he is, losing sight of what he’s even doing on this planet. He’s supposed to be the spark, inspiring people to fight back, and all he’s managed to do is to stand by while Finn and Rey weaken and sicken. _Hell of a spark you are, Dameron._

Rey is awake for a little while and he talks desperately at her, leaving pauses for her exhausted replies, until none comes and he realises she’s asleep again.

The four walls of the room are grey, and out of the window more of the same: dark stone buildings, glowering grey cloud, dust and smoke. The sound of the wind whistling outside, laboured breathing inside, and nothing but the cold and his own thoughts in his head.

Poe’s always thought of himself as someone with self control, able to recognise an impulse and not act on it, make good, lighting-fast decisions in the cockpit. But the thoughts are stronger than he is. Every death he witnessed in the last days of the Resistance comes back to him now, voices cut off, lives extinguished, and him powerless to change anything. And through it all, a dark stain like grease, like a poison gas: an echo of Kylo Ren in his head, touching his memories, staining them, reshaping them in light of his complicity until everything is deformed. What right did he have to be happy at 10, at 15, at 20, when they were stealing Finn away from his family; when Rey was scavenging and starving alone; when Rose’s planet and all the people on it were being bled dry?

If they hurt him, if knew more pain than he had ever felt in his life on that day on the _Finalizer_ , maybe he deserved it. Maybe he deserved to be strapped down, held helpless however much he struggled, while they did whatever they wanted to him. If he screamed and screamed and they kept going and kept going and kept going, isn’t that just how the galaxy is? He was meant to die there. Nobody was going to come, and he knew it.

Finn stirs, and Poe leaps across the room to help him sit up and drink, eases him back down, stays there sitting beside him when he’s settled again.

“Why did you break me out?” he whispers. “There must have been another way you could have got away.”

“What?” Finn’s eyes are glassy, not quite focused. His hand lies on the blanket as if he might be reaching out for Poe. Or he might not be.

Poe leans down on his elbow so he can see Finn’s face properly.

“Why did you help me, on the _Finalizer?_ Really?”

Finn’s eyes are closing. He sighs, stretches out until his hand touches Poe’s sleeve. His fingers curl slightly, just enough to be deliberate.

“Ok…” he mutters.

Poe waits for more, watching Finn’s face intently as if the answer might be there in the pure line of his profile or the hint of his beard coming in.

“Finn?” he prompts, but Finn is asleep.

Poe lies there next to him, Finn’s hand loosely curled around his wrist. He watches Finn’s chest rise and fall and listens to the wind, all the horror he has seen and lived through whirling round and round in his head, bouncing off the grey walls and back at him every time he shakes it off.

 

As soon as Rose gets back, he has to get out: he gives her five minutes to scrub the oil off her hands before he’s out the door. Rey’s sitting up, at least: pale and visibly thinner, but awake and lucid and Rose was so relieved she almost cried. So it’s ok if he isn’t there for a while, he tells himself.

Icy air greets him as he pushes open the external door, with a wind that knows how to insinuate itself down the back of his neck and strip out the last bit of warmth from his bones. That’s alright though, because he has to move, and if he’s moving, he’ll stay warm. First he walks fast, and then faster, and once he’s on the open road out of the mining town and there’s no one to wonder what he’s doing, he runs. No destination in mind, just the wind in his face, his lungs burning, and some vague idea that he can leave his own thoughts behind.

Introspection isn’t good for him, that’s for sure.

Running helps, a bit. His body is tired enough to at least slow his head down and eventually he stops, bends almost double as he catches his breath. He’s at the edge of the settlement, lights and the faint hum of the mine behind him; empty hills and the wind whistling in the dark ahead of him. Poe turns, and head back at a slow jog.

 

As he enters the building Oron appears from his own room, so deliberately casual Poe immediately suspects he’s been waiting for him.

“Hey, man. How’s Finn doing? And your friend, Rey?”

Poe’s still out of breath and windswept. He must look like he’s just fled the scene of a crime: no one needs to take exercise here. Work burns all the energy you’ve got.

“Still pretty sick. I got my, uh, my friend offworld sent us money for the meds and the vaccine, but it’s gonna take a while to get them back on their feet.”

“Yeah. Yeah I bet. I thought everyone got the vaccine these days, but…”

Poe knows an open question when he hears one. There’s no pressure behind this one: he could say, I know, right? and leave it there, or he could answer the question Oron isn’t asking out loud.

“Yeah. Me too. But Rey, she was looking after herself from when she was a kid, scavenging on a place called Jakku,” he says, putting his hands in his pockets, matching Oron casual for casual.

“Where?”

“Exactly. And Finn, he was - ” Poe pauses, more to think how much he wants to say than for dramatic effect, but the end result is the same.

This could be friendly concern, or it could be strategic curiosity. Or it could be both. Oron might be an informer, or he might be nosy, or he might be a good person who Poe could take a strategic interest in in return. All he’s got to go on is his gut instinct, the back of his neck prickling with the certainty that this means something.

“Finn’s one of the kids they took to be a Stormtrooper, but he got away first chance he got. Got me out too. Saved my life,” Poe says.

He makes a blank space in his head where he doesn’t think about that, about the hours before Finn. That happened to somebody else. Another man was strapped down and helpless, had secrets torn out of his head; another man knows whose son did that to him.

“They were gonna kill me,” he finishes, and to his mortification his voice carries the hairline crack of it all the same.

Poe isn’t looking at Oron, he can’t, but he senses him holding very still. Listening, not reacting.

Very quietly, like he’s trying not to spook him, Oron asks, “Why were they gonna kill you?”

Poe forces his gaze back up to meet his eyes. Takes a deep breath.

“They don’t like it when you don’t agree with them. And I don’t agree with them at all.”

That’s as clear as he can be without buzzing the guy with his X-wing.

Oron nods slowly. “There’s not much love for the First Order round here, either,” he says, and Poe nods back.

“That’s good to know,” he says, still nodding like a fool.

It’s Oron who gets the conversation back on track.

“Oh! Almost forgot - wait right there,” he says, ducking back inside his room and reemerging brandishing a steaming pot that smells like stew. “We made too much,” he tells Poe as he presses it into Poe’s hands. “Help us out. It’ll just go waste.”

Oron is a terrible liar. He knows with three of them not earning, their food won’t last. And he’s right, so Poe accepts it.

“Appreciate it, man,” he says, holding Oron’s gaze.

Oron shrugs it off. “Gotta look out for each other,” he says.

 

The stew almost ends up all over the floor when he pushes through his own door to find Finn on the ground.

His heart freezes and then it’s pounding, flooding him with useless adrenaline as he makes sense of what he’s seeing. Rey still in bed, deeply asleep: Rose, on the verge of tears, has pulled blankets over him and his head is in her lap.

“Poe!” she cries. “I’m sorry, he fell over coming back from the fresher and I can’t get him up, Rey’s asleep and I tried but I’m not strong enough - ”

He puts the pot down without thinking, drops to his knees next to them. His hands are shaking.

“Shit, Rose, it’s my fault, I shoulda been here. You did the best you could – here, Finn, we’re gonna get you up and back in bed, ok buddy?”

Finn blinks up at him and smiles.

“I feel better, you know. I’m just dizzy and once I lay down I couldn’t get up, but I really do feel better!” His voice is clear: weak, maybe, but this is Finn again, back with them.

Poe sags with relief, sits back on his heels.

“You ready to get up off the floor?” he asks.

“Yeah. Definitely.”

Even with two of them it’s not exactly easy: Finn outweighs him, and if he hadn’t been shifting rocks for weeks he might not have had the strength either. But they find the leverage, one on either side: Poe gets Finn’s arm round his neck, pushes up from the knees, and they’re on their feet, shuffling the few steps to Finn’s side of the sleeping platform.

Finn’s icy cold from the stone floor, shivering hard as he curls up and waits for Rose to drape all the blankets back on top of him.

“Thanks, Rose,” he says through chattering teeth as she kisses the top of his head. “Sorry you had to sit on the floor with me.”

“I’ll sit on the floor with you any time,” she says fiercely. “I’m sorry I couldn’t pull you up.”

She’s sniffing back tears when she turns to Poe, scrubbing the back of her hand across her eyes.

“Rose, you did good here,” he says. “Thanks. I’m sorry I’ve – I’m sorry I wasn’t – I didn’t step up and you had our backs.”

She blinks at him once and then flings herself into his arms, hot tearful face in his chest, hugging him fiercely just for a second. He’s so surprised he almost doesn’t know what to do with his arms, stands there stock still before muscle memory kicks in and he hugs her back.

Finn’s still visibly shivering when Poe slides under his own cold blankets.

“You ok?” he whispers.

“Sure,” Finn says through chattering teeth. “I really do – feel – better. I just got cold.”

Poe’s cold too. Of course he is. He’s always cold. On the other side of the curtain he knows Rose has buried under the covers next to Rey: if he looked over, he’d only see the tops of their heads, tufts of dark hair against the pillow.

 _Man up, Dameron._ _It’s not about what you need, it’s about Finn_ , he thinks furiously at himself.

“Would it help if we shared the blankets?”

Finn shakes his head, a faint movement in the dark. “You don’t need to do that, it’s fine. I know you don’t - ”

“Don’t what?”

“Want to, uh, touch me. It’s fine. You don’t need to.”

He feels it like a hollow place contracting inside him, a painful clench around nothing.

“I don’t – _not_ want to,” he says carefully. His pulse is loud in his ears, blood rushing. “I don’t wanna, uh, overstep, but you’re cold, and - ” _I’m responsible for you_ , he almost says, but his mouth is smarter than he is. “And I’m your friend, so we should share the blankets to get warm. I mean, I like you, man. Happy to do it.”

He breathes in the dark, sure that Finn can hear his heart thumping.

“Finn? Buddy, don’t make me beg you to get under the covers with you, ‘cause I’ll do it. Watch me.”

He turns on his side, scoots right up against Finn’s mountain of bedding, and bless Finn but he’s already grinning, reluctance forgotten as he lifts one corner for Poe to wriggle under next to him, wrestle his own layers on top without letting too much cold air into the little warmth they had.

“Ok. Ok. Thanks, man,” Finn says. He’s not quite touching Poe. “This is better, huh?”

“Yeah. Better,” says Poe.

It isn’t really, not yet, they’re both still too cold to be able to warm each other up. But they’ll get there, and for now the gravity of Finn beside him is deeply comforting in a way he hadn’t expected. Not temperature, but one of those other elemental forces that slows down everything whirling around in his head.

“Finn?” he whispers.

“Yeah?”

“Why did you think I didn’t want to – didn’t want to touch you?”

A pause, the rustle and earthquake of Finn turning on his side – closer to Poe but facing away. Safer that way. “I dunno. You just always seem to keep your distance, and in the hot spring, when they said massage would be good for my back, your face – you just looked, I don’t know, horrified. Sorry. I got things wrong I guess.”

“No, no, it’s – I guess I _was_ keeping my distance. I dunno. Sorry. I didn’t really realise.”

“Hey, no big deal. I’m glad I was wrong.”

“Yeah – listen, if I move right up closer to you - ”

“Sure,” Finn says at once, so Poe shifts, closes the small gap until he’s pressed against the solid line of Finn’s back, arm across his ribs rising and falling with Finn’s breathing.

Finn squeezes his hand then lets go. “It’ll be ok,” he murmurs. “You’ll see.”

 

Poe wakes up tangled in Finn, except he’s not really awake yet. He can sense the surface just above his head, but sleep is holding him under where it’s warm and he’s so comfortable that his body doesn’t even belong to him, buoyed up on the vaguest sense of arousal that he doesn’t need to do anything about. He can just lie here draped against Finn and exist.

Finn stirs very slightly, resettles. His hips move, then he presses back and for one blissful second Poe just goes along with it. Finn’s in his arms, that’s Finn’s ass against his morning erection, and everything is warm and perfect and right, and he’s waking up properly now, rushing up to awareness, and in a mortifying rush of white heat he realises what he’s doing and yanks himself away. Grips Finn’s hip, hard, to stop his body following Poe’s.

“Hmm,” Finn murmurs, not really awake.

“Sorry, buddy, got a bit of a – morning situation here,” he mutters through gritted teeth.

“Uh,” says Finn. Then “Oh! Right!”

They’re frozen in place. Poe doesn’t dare to move.

Finn tilts back, not quite looking at him, and Poe feels the muscle in his hip flex and relax. “Me too, actually,” Finn says in a sleep-rough voice.

The moment holds, stretches out and opens with possibility. The air turns to honey with it, with what could happen if Poe just reached out. He’s so hard, and he wants nothing more than to plaster himself against the broad expanse of Finn’s back, bury his face in the nape of his neck. Hold him close and rub off against him until he comes -

“Guess you really are feeling better,” Poe jokes, and forces himself to roll out from under the covers and up into the icy morning air. It’s the hardest thing he’s ever done in his _life_.

Finn rolls onto his back, a vaguely person-shaped lump under all the blankets, and smiles at him.

“Yeah, I am!”

“Great. That’s great, buddy. But last night I had to peel you off the floor, so you can stay right there. I’ll make you breakfast for once.”

And with BB-8 fussing around his ankles wanting to know why he’s up four minutes before the droid was going to wake them, if they don’t need him to wake them up any more he should just tell them, Poe busies himself rinsing out the two halves of the thermopot, and doesn’t think at all about how he could have answered differently.

* * *

 

Rey doesn’t feel it happen, but she feels the burst of horror from Finn strong enough that she thinks it must be him buried under the rocks. It’s third-hand pain, dust, gasping for breath, rising panic of trapped, trapped, trapped –

It’s not him. He’s watching, he was right there in the mine, and what she’s feeling is what Finn is feeling. It’s not Poe either, just desperate empathy for someone he doesn’t even know, alive but hopelessly imprisoned under tonnes and tonnes of granite.

Arit puts a hand on her arm. “Rey? What’s up?”

If they fall behind schedule she’ll catch it, but she’s one of those good people who tells them they’re stronger if they look out for one another. She’s also the reason they add, “or pregnant” when they joke about getting sick sending you under. As chief mechanic she works 10 hour shifts with her baby in a sling: when she has to weld, there’s always another woman holding out her arms to keep the warm bundle safe away from sparks and molten metal. When Arit has to feed or change him, someone finds a way to distract the overseer. But still. Another mouth to feed, all the times the overseer wasn’t distracted. She owes the company more than her wages will ever cover.

“I’ll be working here till I die,” jokes Arit, kissing the baby’s head. “So don’t get sick, and don’t get pregnant.”

It’s the grim joke that binds the team together. When someone approaches an unstable fuel line that might blow up in their faces, has to wriggle inside a huge excavator engine to unjam it, the others will squeeze her shoulders, mutter, “Don’t get pregnant, ok?” The ritual words to keep each other safe.

Before Rey can find words to justify how she knows about the rock fall 10 levels down, Elya is calling her over to the internal comm and it’s Finn, voice shaking and out of breath.

“Rey, the tunnel collapsed, you’ve got to come. You’ve got to get them out. They’re still alive, Rey, we can hear them - ”

They’ve talked about this, of course they have. How much to tell, who to trust. If anyone learns that Rey can use the Force, how easy would it be to connect the dots, find out who she is and who might be looking for her. There’s a bounty on Poe, and on Finn, but Rey’s is even higher than theirs. Enough to tempt even allies to turn them in, and here they don’t have any allies yet, just strangers they work alongside, people who need the money.

“I’m coming,” she says.

Luke Skywalker was full of shit. The Force is _all_ about floating rocks.

 

A pale emergency light casts looming shadows that lurch and flicker, an unhealthy glow that manages to shine right in her eyes while being barely bright enough to see by. The miners are grey with dust that glows like something solid, and it takes her a second to recognise Finn, then Poe, kneeling with dozens of others in front of a wall of rubble, all trying to make a hole with their bare hands.

They barely look round when she skids to a halt at the foot of the mountain. Then Finn realises it’s her.

“Rey! Can you do it? There’s so much rock, we’re trying to shift it but it’s not stable – listen, oh fuck, Rey, someone’s screaming - ”

It looks impossible. A mountain of sharp granite, half the planet come down on top of them in the cold darkness and from the mine operator, nothing. No help, no reaction. This is a terrible place, so far from the light and from anything alive, and she can’t do it, this is so much more than last time she moved rock when she knew Finn was waiting for her on the other side –

“How can I help, Rey? What can I do?” Finn’s asking, and then she knows.

She doesn’t turn her face away from the rock face, just reaches blindly for Finn until her hand finds his and his gritty fingers close around hers.

There’s panic building on both sides of the wall, the men trapped and the men trying to free them, but Rey grips tight to Finn’s hand and closes her eyes, blocks out the screams and the shouting, filters away Poe calling back, _we’re coming, keep calm, we’re gonna get you out of there_ , and then she can see it. The precise pattern that links the weight of all this stone, its balance point, how to lift it all.

All the noise falls away as she stretches out her hand. Finn tells her later that that part was real: everyone fell silent as the first rocks floated up into the air, turned to stare at the girl in grey with engine grease on her face and one arm outstretched, working magic deep down in the mine.

The Force shows her the trajectory of each one, clear as a blueprint - up and forward and over this man’s head, down safely behind him; out and straight ahead, down to the side – only it’s a blueprint of moving parts, and they’re all translucently clear in her mind, no possibility of error as she moves meteor rock away from fragile living skin and bone, choking dust away from mouth and nose and into harmless sand that patters down like rain.

“Yes,” Finn says and when she opens her eyes again the tunnel is clear, and the miners are gently lifting the injured men to carry them up to the surface.

It’s like standing up too fast on an empty stomach. She’s fine, but she sways, might have had to sit down hard in the dust if Finn hadn’t been there to steady her, but with his worried face in front of her and his arms holding her up it passes in a second. He’s watching close enough to see when her balance is back: squeezes her arms and lets go without stepping away.

They nod at her as they carry the injured past her, like a terrible military parade.

 

The visits start that same evening.

First it’s one of the older women Rey works with, who brings a girl barely into her teens.

They stand awkwardly until Poe steps in. “Please, will you join us? Sit down, please,” and they do sit, perched on the very edge of their chairs as Poe introduces himself, Finn, Rose, soothing niceties until they relax.

“Arit told us you had a power,” the woman says at last, hands clasped tight in front of her like supplication Rey can’t grant. “My daughter, Canan, we think she – sometimes things move. She moves them. We wanted to ask you.”

Rey looks at the girl and the girl looks back. Not so much younger than she is, really, and a life as hard as Jakku in its own way. Nothing easy, nothing soft for a girl to come of age: the work, the cold, mine dust or engine grease, and always debts to pay that can’t be paid.

Rey holds out her hand across the table.

Canan hesitates then reaches out, a frayed cuff and raw knuckles, black grease that won’t shift under her nails vivid against pale skin, and when their fingers touch it’s with a rush of recognition, a circuit completing in the Force that makes them both gasp. There’s power here in the child’s hand, flowing through her, connecting her to everything, the whole galaxy alive in her. Her eyes widen as Rey shows her _, look, look, you have this too! You’re like me! I can show you how to use it…_ and it’s dizzying, the sense of widening, opening out, and expanse of space before them that they can feel with a sense that is beyond human.

When she opens her eyes again, her friends have drawn close. Rose sitting next to her, Finn and Poe standing behind her, and through the Force she senses from all three the desire to protect her; the need to be close but not loom over the other women and alarm them, their awe at what she can do.

They thank Finn when they leave, too, try to press a small coin into his hands for the wages he lost running to the comm to bring Rey. He won’t take it, though. Shakes his head and puts his hands in his pockets.

“Thank you, but everyone lost wages today,” he says.

“But you’re the one who left the tunnels. They take more for that,” she argues, but Finn won’t budge.

“We’re glad we could help,” he says, looking over at Rey to include her, and she nods. Her blood is singing with revelation of someone like her, a girl, a nobody, here on this cold grey planet where the people live as slaves in all but name.

That’s the first visit, but all night they come. Mostly women, many mothers and daughters, a few boys too, even more tongue-tied than the girls. They come in alone, in pairs, a group of friends where only one suspects she has the power but when Rey touches hands with them all there’s another, one who never guessed what she had and sits blinking, overwhelmed with the newness of it opening before her.

They are almost silent, stumbling over the few words necessary to explain their presence; or elated, sure, only wanting to meet her and confirm what they secretly knew. Quietly glad, nodding their thanks and leaving, or laughing out loud with the delight of it.

Arit is the last to call, and that’s when Rey realises she’s more than the chief mechanic, that her insistence on their solidarity is more than a character trait.

She sits on Rey and Rose’s side of the sleeping platform, the baby on her knee, and thanks Rey for what she did. Then she waits, a deliberate pause that Rey doesn’t know how to fill.

But Poe does.

“We’re with the Resistance,” he says into her expectant silence, then corrects himself with a wince. “We were the Resistance. There’s not much left. And you must be the opposition in hiding.”

Arit bows her head in acknowledgement. “There’s not much of us left either.”

For a second the two of them look at each other, Poe with dust still in his hair and Arit with oil under her fingernails, and Rey feels a ripple in the Force as they understand each other. Not like her connection with the girls who’ve come tonight, but something just as strong.

“Then maybe we can help each other out,” Poe says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some acknowledgements: Rey touching hands with Force sensitive girls is very much inspired by Naomi Alderman's novel 'The Power', which if you are at all interested in the concept of women with brutal magic powers I recommend enormously. Living in a place without heating is inspired by my city, which just? doesn't? think? we need? heating? Like we're in denial about winter? It's not that cold outdoors but indoors we SUFFER.  
> Anyway I'm on [Tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/), come and have feelings about how traumatised these characters are and (whisper it) how TLJ let them down


	3. Part 2

 

That chance to help each other out comes sooner than they think.

An urgent holo call from General Organa, her flickering image telling them the news that hasn’t broken on the planet and probably isn’t supposed to until after it’s all over. It’s what they’ve been expecting, the reason they’re here at all, and now it’s about to happen Finn finds himself resenting the idea of change.

This is the first place he has ever chosen to be, the first people he has ever chosen to live with, and just when he feels settled, stable, the shape of a new life growing up around him, the First Order appear to tear it down.

Finn looks around and sees not the barely-furnished space they moved into, but the place where he lives with his friends. Poe’s boots are by the door side by side with his own, Rey’s staff standing next to them. The thermopot where he brewed his first caf sits by the sink in its component parts, drying after Poe washed it. In the cramped fresher, a little pile of Rose’s hair ties; a serum Poe puts in his hair (“It gets really - curly,” he explained once, gesturing to a space around his head as if to imply his un-serumed hair would fill it); a skin cream Rey gave to him for the damage the mine is doing to his hands. She says it smells of hanavas, but he’s never smelled those, whatever they are.

He doesn’t turn, but behind him are two mounds of blankets instead of three, or four. The space where Rose and Rey sleep, and the space where he and Poe now sleep under the same covers, in the same pocket of warmth. Mostly Finn wakes up first, ignores the inner voice that still thinks there’s a punishment for being the last cadet out of bed, and allows himself just a few seconds to lie there, feel the warmth of another human being almost touching him. Or really touching him: sometimes he wakes with Poe curled protectively around him, arm heavy over his waist, or with their legs tangled together and his face mashed into Poe’s shoulder.

He’d take more if Poe were offering it, but after that first morning when Poe pretended not to have understood him, Finn is careful not to push. This is already more than he’s ever had before. That first night, he heard Rose whisper in the dark, telling Rey about her sister, and he’d fallen asleep to the image of two children huddled together against the cold, comforting each other. As different from his own childhood as he can imagine, with its rigidly enforced distances, its silent cubicles where the door was locked on you at night and you might be the last person left alive in the dormitory, on the base, in the whole galaxy. Or that was how it had seemed, anyway.

Here, Rose snuffles in her sleep. The mine hums and grumbles far beneath them. Sometimes Poe jerks, flings out an arm as if warding off a blow, and Finn half-wakes to murmur, s _hh, Poe, it’s ok…_ , sounds more than words. Here, there’s a friendly droid to sing him awake; Rey sleepy-eyed and tousled across the table as dawn rises. Literally a galaxy away from the morning klaxon and the gleaming mess hall of his old life.

And now the First Order are coming to manage mining operations, or “permanently install their own puppet government and strip the place,” as General Organa puts it. “Either they act now and overthrow the regime, or the First Order will send troops down and it will be too late. You’ve got to get them to act, Poe. And fast.”

For a wild second Finn thinks, what if we just run? The four of us can get a ride on the next ship out of here, find another place to live. We’re not responsible for the people here. But even as the idea crosses his mind, he knows they can’t.

They have friends here. They’ve worked and suffered alongside these people, Rey has a network of new Force users. All of that will be swept away if the First Order come here: not only the life Finn has started to build, but the lives of millions. They’ve extended a hand to him time and time again, and if he’s not a Stormtrooper then he has to be someone who stands his ground, who doesn’t run away.

Poe scrubs his hands through his hair and leans back, squinting at the blue glow of the General’s image.

“We’ll tell them,” he says. “We made contact with the opposition; they’ll have to decide fast how they wanna play this.”

“You need to make them see that regime change now is their only chance. Even if they don’t think they’re ready, they must move now.”

If there is doubt or nuance on her face or in her tone, it is lost over the holo. General Organa is sure what the people of this planet need to do, and it’s up to Poe to make them see that.

Poe is frowning, arms crossed. “Isn’t that their decision?”

“Of course it is, but you’ve got to persuade them to make it. Convince them the risk is worth it.”

“And if I can’t? If they decide to wait and see?”

“Poe, you incited a mutiny in five hours. A revolution in three days ought to be easy!”

His blue-lit gaze flickers up to Finn, Rose and Rey gathered around the table, listening. “Other people’s planet is kinda different to a star cruiser,” he mutters. “Bigger, for a start.”

“If you don’t convince them it is your business, and fast, then you’ll have the First Order down there to do it for you.”

 

“Well, she’s got a point,” Poe says when the holo winks off, leaving them in semi darkness. “But I dunno what we’re gonna say to these guys. Why should they listen to me?”

“Why wouldn’t they?” Finn asks. Poe has always seemed to him like a man to listen to, and who will listen in return.

Poe’s smile is a straight line with no humour behind it. “Because a pilot with no ship and no fleet doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, you know?”

“It does in me,” he says doggedly. “But then, I’m the Stormtrooper who ran away.” It’s a perfectly factual description, but Poe never can let it stand.

“Yeah, and I’m from _Jakku_ , so there’s no reason they’d listen to me either,” Rey adds, and that gets a laugh out of him.

“We are gonna have to work on our sales pitch, people,” he tells them. “I mean. You - ” Poe points at Rey: “You’re the first of the new Jedi!”

“She can float rocks,” Finn adds.

“So many rocks,” Rey agrees. “Everyone saw me do it, and I’m teaching half the girls here to float rocks too.”

“You’re right, that’s gotta count for something. And you -” there’s something softer in Poe’s eyes when he turns to Finn. “You’re the guy who proves you can stand up to them.”

It’s so close to what Finn has just been trying to convince himself that it sends a shiver down his spine. Like Poe was there ahead of him, always believing in this better version of Finn until he actually exists.

“So what do we do?” asks Rey.

Poe gets to his feet, paces from one side of the room to the other and stands there hands on his hips, eyes fixed apparently on nothing. Sinks back into the chair he was in before. “Alright, Outside Agitator Squadron: what do you guys think we should do?”

“What do we think?” she echoes.

“Yeah. I wanna know what you think.”

Rey shakes her head, shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ve never tried to incite a revolution before.”

“Me neither. Nor has any of us, but listen - this isn’t how it used to be. It doesn’t work having one person giving orders and everyone else doing what they say – if they do listen to us, it ain’t gonna be because of me. Alright - ” he holds up a hand as Finn starts to object, “Partly because of me, but not _just_ because of me, that’s for sure. So we decide together.”

Finn looks at Rey, at Rose, at Poe standing there asking them what they think, and nobody speaks. Flickers of his training are scrolling across the back of his mind, scenarios playing out, trying to predict what the First Order will do, extrapolate what _they_ should do.

“I know what happens when they take over a planet,” Rose says slowly. “There is no good outcome for these people if the First Order move in. Either they risk it and fight back now, or they’ll be wiped out in a generation. We have to make them see that.”

He knows it’s true. That was part of what they were training him for, to be the force that did that. To mistreat, brutalise, shoot down, and believe in what they were doing every step of the way. Never question it.

Poe nods.

“Ok, so that’s a vote for doing something now. Finn? What do you think?”

Finn takes a deep breath, lets it out again. Once you start questioning, there’s no end to it.

They came here with the express aim of starting an uprising, of being the spark that would burn down the First Order. And thousands of light years away, that was easy to say. Theoretical people would rise up, fight back in undetermined ways, overthrow a government Finn knew little about, and strike a blow against a mutual enemy. Now the people are not theoretical. They are Oron, who teases him but knows when to stop; Arit and her baby and the opposition living in hiding; all the men Rey saved underground. All the young women who seek her out to explore the limits of what they can do with the Force.

Poe’s right: the decision has to be theirs. Finn knows the First Order, and Rose knows what happens when they want something from your planet. Of course it would be safer to tell his friends to run, to find passage for the four of them off Ikut and out of this system, but he knows they wouldn’t go. Neither will he.

The man the First Order made might have something they need.

“I think… that if they don’t want the First Order here, they’re better off not letting them land,” he begins. “It would be better for them to act now, seize the government and tell them the deal’s off: they’re expecting a simple handover of power and a docile population, so they’ve prepared for that, with minimal ground troops mainly for show, not for taking the place by force. Different playbook. They could always come back, but depending on how badly they need the viridian and the damage they think it would do to their reputation if news got out that this planet turned them down, or whether they want this to be a legitimate trade deal…”

He’s been speaking for too long, drawing attention to himself. Reminded them who he used to be before he ran away: they’re staring at him, and he braces himself for the recoil, for the horror to show on their faces.

It never comes. Rey is still leaning forward, towards him, waiting for him to continue. Rose is nodding in agreement. And Poe, Poe Dameron is smiling at him, a smile that grows and lights up his whole face in a way Finn hasn’t seen for weeks and weeks. Not since the day they ran across the tarmac to each other, because they weren’t dead.

“That’s it. That’s exactly the info they need to hear. The decision is up to them, but that’s what we gotta tell ‘em. Right? Rey, you in?”

“Yes. Definitely,” Rey says decisively. Turns to Finn: “If you’re in, I’m in.”

Poe jumps to his feet, somehow serious and terrified and elated all at once; or maybe that’s Finn and he’s just reading on Poe’s face what is actually written on his own.

“Ok then. Let’s go start a revolution,” Poe says.

* * *

 

Making their own minds up was the easy part though.

News has broken on Ikut, somehow. The opposition in hiding must have their own sources just like Leia has hers, and they’re already assembled in a cantina close to Arit’s rooms when they find them.

There’s a guy at the door acting casual, but Poe knows a guard when he sees one. Makes eye contact and walks right in like he’s been invited, fear running down his spine where no one can see it. He’s met by the noise and complicated warmth of humans pressed together in an enclosed space; the smell of emotion running high. He’s never in his life been so grateful to have backup, to be able to glance left at Rey, right at Finn and Rose. He’s pretty sure they’re doing a better job than he is at looking relaxed, but then they don’t have to do the talking.

Arit is nursing her baby at the head of a table in a back room, with Oron, a handful of the older Force users, another man they know from the mine and a few they don’t. Mostly a known quantity: that’s good, that helps.

A path opens up to let them through: Arit was expecting them, then, and that helps too. Why would she expect them if she doesn’t intend to act?

His hands are still so cold his fingers ache. When he opens his mouth to speak, he still doesn’t know what he’s going to say.

“Arit, Oron. Hey. We heard the news. Came to offer our help, if there’s anything we can do.” Not entirely honest, as an opener. Of course there’s something they can do: Rey with her terrifying power, Finn who can work out what the First Order will do and exactly how to stop them. Rose who can control all the engineering systems on the planet. “What’s the plan here?”

“We sit tight and we don’t do anything stupid,” says one of the men Poe doesn’t know. A miner with pale underground skin, one finger missing on his left hand. “Like sending untrained men and women with pickaxes up against an army.”

“We haven’t made a decision yet,” Arit raises her voice so that it carries. Ok. So she’s not in favour of _do nothing_ , and Poe’s pretty sure her vote will be the decisive one. “You were with the Resistance. Tell us what you think.”

It’s such a close echo of what he just asked his friends that he almost smiles. That edge of recognition, _we see the galaxy in the same way_ , is enough to carry him through the rest of his nerves, get the shake out of his voice.

“It’s your world and your decision. But we think now is the time to fight - ”

A wall of noise almost drowns him out, solid shape of sound he struggles to read: there’s support there, and dissent, and no way to know which side has the majority. He speaks louder, continues:

“Let me tell you why - ”

Arit raises her hand and the noise quells to a rumble he can make himself heard over.

“You heard of Hays Minor?” He feels rather than sees Rose’s head whip round. “Mining planet, got a lot in common with Ikut. Rose is from there - you know Rose, right? Well a few years back, before everyone knew who they were, the First Order took over there, a lot like they want to take over here. And you know what happened, on Hays Minor?”

He leaves a pause, hears the quiet of the room listening to him, people breathing together, waiting for him to tell them something they’d rather not know, that they all wish wasn’t true.

“They bled the place dry in a generation. They don’t care about managing resources for the future: the people were slave labour to them, just like you would be, and when they’d ripped out everything there was to take and the planet was dying, they took all the kids too young to fight back – you know, babies, like Arit’s son - ” he takes a step closer; points as if anyone could miss Arit’s point of stillness at the head of the table - this is a show after all: gotta give ‘em something to look at as well as listen to. “And they took them for Stormtroopers, and then used the planet to test their weapons. There’s no one left on Hays Minor now.”

This silence stretches out, a frozen moment of horror. Rose is grim faced, her chin jutting out like a challenge, daring someone to claim it didn’t happen. He can’t look at Finn right now. Finn might have come from Hays Minor, or somewhere very like it, and once, for a little while, he must have been a baby in someone’s arms like Arit’s son.

Arit’s watching him, expressionless. “And what do you suggest we do to avoid sharing the same fate as Hays Minor?”

“Fight back now. Today, while we still can. An uprising - ”

That’s as far as he gets before the nine fingered miner is on him, grabbing him by the collar and shoving him against the wall hard enough to wind him.

“This isn’t your world,” he hisses. “Easy for you to tell us to risk it when you can just call your shuttle out of here when it all goes wrong!”

“I’m not _telling_ you to risk it! It’s up to you,” Poe chokes out. The man’s arm is hard against his throat, pinning him there. He’s only peripherally aware that everyone is on their feet, yelling, uproar: his whole focus is the anger on the face inches from his.

He can see Finn has his hand on his blaster, can almost feel Rey prickling with the Force ready to step in. But Poe catches her eye just for a second: he can’t even really shake his head, but he manages just enough of a movement to make it clear they shouldn’t intervene yet. Let it play out.

“Timon, let him go!” Arit’s voice cuts through the commotion, and Timon doesn’t let him go but it’s suddenly easier to breathe as the grip shifts to his collar, hauling him up almost off his feet.

He stares the guy right in the eye, glances over at Arit, baby in her arms. Wills himself to relax, be cool, like there’s no possibility he’s about to get his neck broken here.

“It’s gotta be your decision,” he says. “But we know the First Order, and believe me you do not want them on your planet. You all know who we are?”

“Timon,” Arit repeats. “Let him go. Let him speak,” and finally the hands loosen, dropping him. Poe shrugs his jacket straight on his shoulders and steps out into the space that’s opened up, where everyone can see him. Timon folds his arms across his chest and glowers, but doesn’t stand in his way.

“I’m Commander Poe Dameron of the Resistance under General Leia Organa, and we can help you. I can’t promise there will be no losses if you decide to do this, but you can win.”

A voice from the crowd calls out, “There is no Resistance! You lost every ship in your fleet, how are you going to help us?”

“You think a fleet would be any good to you? What would they do, bomb your governor’s palace? The mine? The Resistance didn’t go around deciding who should be in charge on other people’s planets. It’s your own government handing you over! But if you step up, get rid of these guys who are getting rich off selling you out, you can call on the whole system for help when you need it. They’d rather trade with you than watch your planet die with them next in line. They’d help you.”

“They’d help us? I thought you were going to help us!” It’s the same voice, he can see the speaker now.

“Yeah, we are gonna help you. You know what we did, when we had a fleet?” he calls out to the crowd. “We took out their Star Killer with X-wings! We took out their Dreadnought with sleight of hand and 30-year old bombers! We don’t need a fleet to get a legitimate government back in power here and see off a couple of cruisers.”

Is that really his voice, sounding so sure? He’s always had a smart mouth, everyone says so, but the stakes have rarely been as high as this. It’s like there’s someone else speaking, another version of Poe Dameron who is sure, who never lies awake next to Finn and feels doubt like a physical presence in the room, who wants to hide from it but has nowhere to go. This other, surer, Poe Dameron knows they will win, and he’s done the calculations and knows it’s worth the losses. He’s never lost anybody, or if he has he’s never let it knock the hope out of him because willing volunteers make their own choices. He’s never lost faith in the cause, in his childhood heroes, in his commanding officers, and somehow, somehow, somehow, he can even be worthy of Finn’s trust in him.

Voices call out, “How?” and Arit faces him, smiling faintly, rubbing circles on the baby’s back. She knows how to read a crowd, and that smile is telling him he’s won it.

“First, we’ve got Rey. The first of the new Jedi. We’ve got all of you who can do what Rey does, use the Force like that - that’s better than any fleet. We’ve got Rose, and all your engineering people who know the infrastructure – you can take down the power, disable machinery, lock this place down. Close the mine, the spaceport, make them land in fucking _parachutes_ \- ”

Laughter ripples through the crowd. Arit nods at him to keep going.

“And best of all, we’ve got Finn. Finn was one of those babies they stole - ” he shouldn’t be saying this, it’s Finn’s story and he has no right to lay it all open in front of everyone like this. But when he looks at Finn, Finn nods at him too. _Keep going. Tell them_. “But it’s not that easy to make someone fight against their will. He got out the first chance he got, and he knows how they think, he knows their manoeuvres, he can predict all their moves so you’ll already be there, waiting for them. He was the best of them: they trained him to do exactly what they’re coming here to do, and that means he knows exactly how to stop them.”

Finn has stepped forward where everyone can see him, and not only that but he’s put himself between Poe and Timon as if he didn’t know he was doing it. He’s standing very straight, not quite at attention but almost, and Poe wants very much to hug him right now. Whisper to him, _you are all that, buddy, but you’re even more to me_.

“So what do you say? We’ve got the military tactics, the infrastructure, the, uh, – the amazing floating rocks -” another laugh for this other Poe Dameron who can make jokes under pressure – “Which is a pretty unbeatable element of surprise on a mining planet…”

Arit turns slowly, facing as many of her people as she can with her son on her hip.

“I don’t want my child to be taken from me and brought up to fight for the First Order. We have talked and waited for long enough: I say we rise up now. We have our friends from offworld standing with us – who else is with us?”

Poe can feel it already, that the balance has tipped. Not that it matters, but Arit already knew what she wanted to do before he walked in the door. All he’s done is provide some public reassurance, an external voice to reflect the plan back at them. Air their fears in front of everyone and tell them there are worse fears to come if they don’t act now.

Timon is the first to step forward. He dips his head to Arit, the Ikut formal greeting; pivots where everyone can see him to repeat the gesture to Poe, to Finn.

“I’m with you,” he says, and the room erupts around them.

They’re doing this.

* * *

 

No one has an accurate memory of all the many steps in a battle, let alone a revolution. If you win, the historians piece it together afterwards, craft a narrative that pulls all the threads together, a consensus of all the moving parts set in motion and where they end up.

Finn doesn’t remember all his own steps, once it starts. Memory comes in flashes, disconnected fragments that do fit together somehow, that mesh with what others were doing, part of the whole, but that don’t explain anything on their own. He holds the blueprint in his head, all the steps he directed them to take, but when it’s all happening that clarity breaks down.

He remembers the beginning, speaking for longer than he ever has or ever will about how the First Order think, and people listening to him. Things he didn’t know he knew, or had words for.

“They follow orders. They stick to the plan. Something unexpected happens, they don’t know what to do because they weren’t trained for that. Here, they'll be especially vulnerable because they're expecting nothing but support on the ground, and they’ll be so sure of themselves they won’t be prepared for resistance. They’ll send out a small force expecting a routine handover, even once they see the situation has changed it’s incredibly difficult for them to adapt and think on their feet.”

“So what does that mean in practice?” he remembers Arit asking.

“It means we get in first and take them by surprise, so once they get down here the plan they thought they were following is no good any more. We need to seize communications – lock down all holotransmissions. You take their calls, tell them the people have put a new government in place, and while they think about that we’ve already taken the governor’s mansion, armoury, space port – we need all of that before they come. Sure, they’ve got the firepower to take them back if they knew they needed to, but they aren’t going to know because -”

“Because we’ve locked down communications,” Arit finishes for him.

He remembers the end of the briefing. Rey grim-faced and determined, knuckles white around her staff. All the adults who can use the Force are with her, a battalion mostly of women in oil-stained overalls, kissing children and sending them to lie low, keep out of harm’s way if harm should come knocking. Tears are wiped away, hair tied back.

Rey hugs him, holds on for a long time. Looks into his eyes when she lets him go.

“Please, please be careful.”

“You too, Rey,” and she throws her arms round him one more time.

She hugs Poe too, and Finn pretends not to hear when Poe mutters, “I’ll keep him safe, Rey. Promise.”

“Right,” calls Arit. “Let’s do this, everyone. We need you all, every single one of you, to come through this. So be careful, don’t get pregnant, and let’s go.”

It’s after that Finn loses the sequence in the granular detail of what he’s doing, the hyperfocus under fire that made him the best in his squadron, best in his battalion. He has Rose in his ear from the control room, a continuous and surprisingly obscene narration in real time of what’s happening everywhere he isn’t.

“Fuckers are firing back at the port – shit, shit, shit, not letting that one take off, Lita, Lita, shut that down - ”

“You need us there?”

“No, no, we cut the power, you’re good. Bastards are grounded, keep going. Poe’s team have the main servers, the holonet’s down – I’m talking to you on fucking _radio_ \- ”

*

The main armoury is easy when they expected it to be hard; that’s why Finn’s there, but they take it in minutes. The cold dark of the small hours with only underpaid conscripts on duty, making a quick decision: why risk their lives fighting the people they grew up with? They’re just kids. Maybe they had more choice than Finn did, but _join the army or starve_ isn’t _much_ more of a choice.

He watches blasters carried out to miners, mechanics, drivers, engineers, teachers; grim and purposeful. The revolution on Ikut is armed now.

*

The hails from the First Order representative in orbit go through to Arit, on the one channel still open for transmissions. She’s leaning forward against the console, both arms braced as if against a strong wind.

The first time she stalls.

“Please hold while I put you through,” she says, holding up a hand to forestall any objections from the room, and simply cuts off the transmission.

A few minutes pass before the next call.

“We’re having some communication issues down here. Ion storm on the surface. Recommend you hold position at this time,” she says, not a hint of the tension in her arms making it through to her voice. She’s a comms operator taking a routine call, that’s all.

It’s amazing how long it takes them to realise something’s not right. Plenty of time for the governor to surrender.

*

Finn won’t do their killing for them, but he’s still the man they made - everything he knows how to do, all of his skills and knowledge, it all comes from the same source.

All his years of training, what they taught him about planning an offensive, what he practiced in battle sims, who he was supposed to shoot and who he was supposed to leave behind: all of that is guiding him now. It’s part of him. You can’t learn about waging war every day for twenty years and not absorb it, not take it in somehow.

He broke with the First Order months ago now, watching a massacre and finding himself unable to join in. Hearing another man screaming in pain and being unable just to leave him to his fate. That’s not enough any more. He had no choice when they made him into a Stormtrooper, but he does have a choice now. He can’t undo his past, he can’t be somebody else: he’s the weapon they made, and he chooses turn it against them.

It’s a constant awareness underpinning every step he takes, a bone-deep satisfaction that he can do _this_ , turn their tools into something that can build as well as destroy. Fighting isn’t morally neutral, and his certainty that this is the right thing to do grows with every strategic target they secure, every miner who flashes him an elated grin, every mechanic who looks back at him then carries on, apparently reassured when he nods.

It’s everything he was trained to do, transformed and repurposed.

Until at last they’re ready and waiting outside the mine for the much-delayed but inevitable First Order landing force. Poe is tense, all alertness at his side, a hundred others breathing around them in the dark with dawn still hours away.

“I’m really not trained for this ground stuff, man” Poe whispers. “In an X-wing I know what to do, but I’m just making this up as I go along.”

He’s close enough that his hair brushes Finn’s ear. The sibilance of his last word is almost physical.

“You’ll do great. Stick with me – I _am_ trained for ground assault. I know what I’m doing. We got this,” and he laughs at his own confidence, amazed at the words that just came out of his mouth. It’s true: between them, Poe and Rey and Rose got them here, and now Finn’s got this part. This planet isn’t going to fall to the First Order: they’re going to wish they’d never set eyes on him.

He fumbles his hand back in the dark, find’s Poe’s coat, his sleeve, follows it down to squeeze his hand. Poe squeezes back, presses his shoulder into Finn’s.

“I know you do, buddy. I’m right here with you, taking notes. Trying not to get shot.”

“I won’t let you get shot.”

“Appreciate it, man. Right back at you.”

Poe squeezes his hand. Doesn’t let go until the lights of the shuttle appear through the clouds just above their heads.

*

Four planned and contained firefights go exactly as Finn anticipated. Maybe one man can realise an enemy knows his every move and adapt accordingly, but he was right: it’s a lot harder for a massive corps of Stormtroopers trained in one set of tactics and conditioned against independent thought to react anywhere near fast enough. The whole model is based on a terrorised and unresisting local population – there is no handbook to turn to when they fight back. When they’re organised, and determined. When the opposition has leadership.

When it’s all over, the moment Finn remembers best was one of the least important, tactically. One of those moments where you might lose a couple of people, but not in catastrophic numbers, nothing that would change the course of events.

They’ll hold the turbine hall, no doubt about it. It’s just a question of picking off and rounding up the few guards and troopers still firing. Tricky, dangerous work with no easy position to hold, but the outcome is never in question.

But there are outcomes and outcomes. There’s the outcome of this uprising, for this planet, and then there’s the outcome for Finn, personally. He doesn’t want anybody in this uprising to be killed, sincerely grieves all the Ikut losses, but his life wouldn’t be changed because of them. He has enough distance to be able to analyse them as military casualties, to carry on rather than stop, because they’re counting on him to carry on and using everything the First Order taught him is the best way he can help.

Not all losses are equal. He already knew that.

The guard raises his blaster and the man he’s aiming for is Poe. Back turned, entirely focused in the wrong direction, and in a single heartstopping moment Finn sees what will happen.

The guard will fire, and he’ll hit Poe Dameron in the back of the head, and that will be that. One man will be killed and the revolution will keep going regardless. As it should. Poe would want it to. He’s prepared – almost expecting – to die like this. But Finn isn’t prepared to lose him. Finn _can’t_ lose him; he won’t. There’s something symbolic about Poe, the man who got him away from the First Order, who didn’t die when they crashed, who improbably credits Finn with saving his life. If Finn didn’t save Poe Dameron, if he doesn’t save Poe Dameron, then isn’t he just the Stormtrooper who ran away?

A lot of things happen at once.

Shouting at the far end of the turbine hall.

Poe and the guard he still hasn’t seen both turn their heads towards the sound of blaster fire, of running.

The guard turns back to Poe, aims again, but in that second of delay Finn raises his blaster and they both fire at once, the single most important shot of his life.

* * *

 

Rey sees it happen.

A mess of mine guards, Stormtroopers, Ikut revolutionaries, all half hidden, half exposed by pillars and machinery in the turbine hall. A terrible place to fight – the sort of place you get shot in the back, or take out one of your own side with a ricochet.

She sees them in a tableau: Poe, unaware. The mine guard poised to fire at him; Finn taking aim at the guard.

They both fire, and both the guard and Poe go down.

Finn’s calling Poe’s name with such anguish in his voice she can’t stand it, and now there’s another sniper Finn can’t see and probably wouldn’t care about if he could taking aim, shooting, and a wave of fury rises up in her.

These are her friends, the only people she has, and some masked soldier would take them away because he’s protecting the profits of a mining corporation?

Time slows down to let her stop the bolt, stop all the bolts they have shot at Finn and Poe. Distantly she is aware that it hasn’t really slowed at all; but she can see every microsecond like sediment, like stripping layer after layer of metal, each moment and each action taking place separately so that she can intervene.

She has time to see Finn crash to his knees at Poe’s side; Poe sit up, clearly unharmed. She sees them both gaze up at the immobile blaster bolts that almost hit them, turn and see her with identical expressions of wonder.

And in the very same moment, she’s aware of the Ikut Force users setting on the troops before they have time to fire. With sticks and wrenches, with their bare hands, and above all with the power they can draw from the Force, clearing the hall in seconds.

But her rage keeps rising and rising. It lets her see every atom in their blasters and weld them useless; it reaches up into orbit where the attack ships and the slave freighter wait. Rey can perceive every wire, every circuit, every grain of dust, and she raises her hand and locks it all down. Leaves life support but locks every bulkhead, freezes every weapon.

She is aware of the new Jedi surrounding her, sweeping away the soldiers with whatever skill they each have. They may not have had much practice but there are so many of them, and they know each other so well that there’s no fumbling, no uncertainty over what to do. They are fighting for their homeworld, their friends and families, their very survival.

Their attention rises to join hers, to see the ships as she sees them and link their power to hers. Rey has come to understand the Force as channelling power rather than truly owning it, but that’s not how it feels. It feels like these new Jedi have something all their own and that they are sharing it with her, amplifying and lifting her up so she can reach further and further, out to the rest of the fleet the First Order have sent, waiting at the far limits of the quadrant: find it and disable those ships too, leave their destructive power an irreparable mess of molten metal and charred circuits, their engines crumbled into millions of useless pieces, only good for scavengers selling scrap durasteel by weight.

There’s so much power at her fingertips that she could knock stars out of orbit, crush planets, kill everybody who stands in her way and who deserves it – and there, that flicker is Ren, noticing. Her ripples in the Force have reached him, like shaking a curtain and sending an insect buzzing into the air. It’s the simplest thing in the world to turn her consciousness away, flick him away as easily as she would brush a bug from her sleeve: she feels the faintest pressure on the flat of her nail and he’s gone, irrelevant. There’s no connection here. Rey has spoken her power out into the fabric of the universe and he has heard her, turning worm-like in the dark towards her. But if he has anything to say in return, Rey isn’t listening.

She’s lost in a white rage that could burn her up and leave only ashes, singed footprints where Rey used to be and a desert of destruction and death in its wake. She hears her own voice, the strangest sensation of calling to herself, calling herself back. Her anger is almost a physical thing now, something she has conjured into being and if she isn’t going to kill every soldier and destroy every ship then she has to find a new shape for it, a balance. She can see with a perspective that isn’t her own Finn pull Poe to his feet, the two of them still holding on to each other as they gaze at her. Finn’s mouth makes the shape of her name and then it’s obvious what she can do.

Finn somehow emerged from the horror of the First Order, dropped down at her feet to the sterile sand of Jakku and tried to help her for no reason at all. Because he’s kind. Because he’s good. All the evil they try to work turned backwards through some inexplicable alchemy to make _Finn_.

Rey lifts her hand and twists, and scatters, and all the rage flips inside out, convulses, and she flicks her fingers and it changes substance, form, by alchemy into all the love she feels for him, for everyone she wants to protect.

Time comes back with a rush, and Rey finds herself sitting on the ground, head spinning, as everyone left standing turns towards her to help.

Finn reaches her first, then Poe a step behind him, and she lets them help her back to her feet. Soft words and concern, their hands warm in hers and Finn’s arm around her waist.

It takes a second for her to register sound again: Finn is speaking but the words arrive with a lag like a bad holo connection.

“…are you alright? Rey? What happened, what did you do? Wait, you’re bleeding – Poe - ”

Now he’s said it she can feel it, a warm trickle of blood from her nose. Poe’s reaching out with a cloth (and how did he know to have a cloth? A tiny scrap of fabric, as if he’d slipped it into his pocket just in case someone had a nosebleed in the middle of a desperate life-or-death battle?) holding it gently to her lip. Her fingers brush his as she raises her hand to take it, and it’s nothing, the bleeding has already stopped.

“What did you do, Rey?” Poe asks, just as gentle as Finn. That voice like when she was sick, soft in a way she barely remembers from earliest childhood.

Good question. What did she do?

Rey blinks at them both, shakes her head to clear the stardust and sparks and destruction.

“I think I destroyed their fleet. The ships, I mean. Not the people. The ships are still there, but they’ll never jump to lightspeed again. They’re just - ”

She holds out her hand, makes a fist and then spreads her fingers wide, scattering the dust.

* * *

 

It’s pretty much over, after that.

From the surface they can’t tell exactly what the damage is, but they see the landing shuttles creep back to the destroyer, then the Tie fighters, and finally the destroyer itself leaves orbit at sublight speed.

Poe watches them go from the spaceport control deck. He can see the blur of his own reflection in the viewport, so he knows he looks casual, leaning against the duraglass wall with his arms crossed. No one would guess his nails are digging into his palms, that his teeth are clenched so hard his jaw aches.

The savage delight at their victory drove him in here, to watch them run away, but now he’s here it’s fighting for space with his memories and dark _what ifs_.

_What if Rey had been there, when we evacuated. I was the first to believe in Luke Skywalker, in the old Jedi, but by the time he came it was too late._

The past has been weighing on him with all its deadly mistakes and inadequacies, both his own and other people’s. Now, today, they have a victory, a reason to look forward, and it won’t bring anyone back if he sours it with past defeat.

Once they’re out of visual range, he pushes himself upright, slips his earpiece back in and heads back out onto the streets. The radar team salute him, and he salutes back rather than trust his voice. There’s still work to be done here, now.

Dawn is just breaking pale and chill as he walks, and the sound of blaster fire grows more sporadic until it stops completely.

“Rose, how we doing out here?” he asks over the comm, but the voice he gets back is Finn’s.

“Oh thank - Where the fuck _were_ you? You weren’t answering, I thought – yeah, it’s him, you were right, he’s ok – What the _fuck_ , Poe?”

He wasn’t expecting it, but it’s a fair question: what are his friends supposed to think, if he goes silent before the gunfire stops? Finn’s watched him almost get shot once tonight already, called out his name with such anguish, and Poe didn’t even think – didn’t have room to think, as he watched those ships wink out of range – about what his dead commlink would have looked like to Finn. It’s inexcusable. Prioritising the dead and the defeated over the living, over the man who saved his life again and seems to care how he lives it.

Poe stops, turns into a doorway. No one’s paying any attention to him but some unexamined instinct makes him seek out privacy. Maybe he’s about to say something to Finn, but not to anybody else.

“I took out the earpiece,” he blurts out. “Their ships just - left. She disabled them all and they’re gone, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the fleet, our fleet, and I just – I just - ”

A tiny silence. “You just needed a minute.”

“Yeah.”

“Even from me?” Finn asks, and there’s something smaller about his voice.

Poe stands there with his mouth open, puts out a hand to brace himself against the wall.

“No,” he says, realisation dawning at the same time as he speaks. “No, not from you. Finn. Listen - It was just too much for a minute, how easy Rey made it look today. You know?”

“Yeah,” breathes Finn. “Yeah, I know.”

“I didn’t mean to – hide from you. Even though I have been. I didn’t mean - ”

“Yeah I know,” Finn says again. “It’s alright. It’s hard. I know it’s hard.”

The line crackles but Finn’s still there: he can hear the breath Finn takes and lets out, feels the horizon coming towards him, something new beginning. The past they’ve lived through together and alone is always there, but they’re moving away from it. Finn never was just a Stormtrooper, and Poe isn’t just the pilot who broke and watched the Resistance fleet be destroyed, one ship at a time. There is a future. He just has to lift his head to see it.

Morning lights the clouds in pink and red. He stands in the now-quiet street, transformed by dawn, and listens to Finn breathe over the commlink.

“Where are you?” he asks. “I’ll come, I’m coming now.”

“The governor’s palace,” Finn says. “I’ll wait for you. I won’t go anywhere. Come here.”

 

Someone must have restored communications for Arit to broadcast a holo announcing the change of regime. Poe reaches the palace just as it goes out, hears a deep, multilayered roar roll up from the crowds in the streets, shaking buildings with its solidity, as half of Ikut cheers her as their new caretaker governor.

There’s another more intimate cheer when Poe come through the wide-open doors to the palace ballroom, a huge place with arched ceilings and polished stone walls, and the crowd recognise him. They sound like they’ve been drinking and they’re probably cheering everybody, but he’ll take it. He walks into what is clearly a victory party: music and bottles of what looks like champagne, dancing and cheering and kissing. Men and women in rough work clothes incongruous in the luxury of this place with its shining marble and ornate furniture, warm like nowhere else on Ikut.

Poe may not share the purity of their joy, but the intensity of it fills the air, impossible to resist. The room shines with it, always in the very periphery of his vision but gone when he tries to look directly at it.

From his vantage point at the top of a curved staircase he tries to find Finn, but the crowd is too big and dense. Instead he is seized by Timon, who wanted to wring his neck yesterday but today sweeps him off his feet in a roaring bear hug, yelling, “We did it!”

“We sure did, man!” Poe just about keeps his balance when Timon puts him down. Someone’s pressing a bottle into his hand, and Timon’s arm stays heavy round his shoulders while he drinks. Then everybody nearby is hugging him too, with the formal Ikut kiss on both cheeks and one or two who miss and land in his ear or on his mouth.

Everybody seems to be kissing everybody, and Poe submits to embraces from people he knows and politely fends off those he doesn’t as he makes his way through dancing and jubilation. He still has the champagne bottle in his hand and he can’t think of any reason not to drink it, sparkling on his tongue and into his veins.

And then suddenly there are Rey and Rose and Finn, arms around each other in a loose huddle, and at the sight of them that big overpowering feeling he’s been carrying around spills out all at once. He knows he must be exhausted but he can’t feel it anymore, it’s like he’s floating, like his feet don’t touch the ground. It’s the first morning in the world and it will always be morning, the sun will always be rising and the First Order can’t touch him or anyone he loves ever again.

Poe waves and shouts, catches the precise moment when Finn sees him: he seems to light up, and Poe flings himself into the melee of dancers and drinkers to take the most direct path to them.

Then they’re colliding, the four of them hugging at once like conspirators, like the revolutionaries they are. Finn’s arm is tight around his waist, his hip and thigh pressed to Poe’s vivid and alive. There’s more kissing, a world away from those formal, ceremonial kisses. They’ve slept in a cold room together, gone hungry together, drunk and fought side by side. He never spoke it but it’s obvious now that they always knew about the weight he was carrying, always tried to lighten it for him.

Rose is on tiptoes to reach up to hug him, kiss him somewhere on the chin, and a second later Rey’s fiercely planting a line of kisses over his cheek; and he turns his face to Finn with something huge and bright like revelation rising up in him, and kisses him on the mouth like it’s something they do every day.

Finn looks at him with shining eyes and everything else disappears. He distantly feels Rey and Rose kiss him again, slide away so he’s face to face with Finn, Finn’s hands gripping his biceps, holding him close.

“Are you ok now?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I really am,” Poe says, and it’s true. This is how they can win: he can see it opening up in front of him just as sure as he can see Finn, the living symbol of hope in the darkest place. “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you before but now – now - ”

“Yeah. I know,” says Finn, and then they’re kissing for real, Finn’s mouth opening to his, bodies close as music soars, delirious unity of feeling binding everyone in the room together.

*

It must be almost noon.

Poe’s sitting on an incredibly comfortable couch, upholstered in something soft and probably expensive. Finn is next to him, head on his shoulder, his body pressed heavy and intoxicating against Poe. He still has a glass in his hand but he’s not drunk, just like Finn isn’t asleep; instead he’s filled with light, with euphoria from the crowd around them, emotion so huge it’s contagious.

Arit pauses in front of them, clinks her glass softly against Poe’s. She looks both smaller and somehow more powerful without the tattered overcoat she usually wears, discarded in this well-heated palace with its crush of people.

“Take your hero of the revolution to bed,” she smiles over her shoulder as she walks past. “There are plenty of staterooms upstairs.”

A rush of heat to his face, overpowering awareness of everywhere Finn is touching him, the smell of him; Poe’s body responding to the hard line of Finn’s thigh against his, the strength of Finn’s shoulders. He’s slept next to Finn for weeks, but this is different: both more intimate and more public. A declaration of sorts.

Finn stirs, raises his head and their faces are very close together.

“What do you say?” he asks, fingers flexing unconsciously on Poe’s arm. His voice is low in spite of the noise, pitched so only Poe can hear him. “Can I take you to bed?”

“She was talking to me, buddy,” Poe tells him. “ _You’re_ the hero of the revolution here. And the hero of the revolution can do anything he wants.”

“But what do _you_ want?”

Poe looks into his eyes and the truth of what he wants is written right there.

“I want you to take me to bed,” he says.

They aren’t even touching as they head up the stairs, but someone behind them still yells, “Don’t get pregnant!”

To a mix of fond laughter and catcalls, Poe calls back, “Hey, we won. Anyone who wants can get pregnant now,” and a ragged cheer goes up as Finn mock salutes them. Instead of letting his arm drop, he drapes it around Poe’s shoulders.

 

Poe’s never gone looking for a spare bedroom in a palace before, let alone looked for a spare bedroom in a palace full of exhilarated revolutionaries. There’s no shortage of space, but there are a lot of other people with the same idea as them and by the time they find an empty room at the end of a long carpeted corridor he’s almost nervous. Overthrowing a government and facing down the First Order was _fine_ , apparently, but closing the door behind them and finally being alone with Finn in a room with a bed leaves him with dry mouth and shaky hands.

“Doesn’t this lock?” he mutters, fumbling with the handle until Finn leans around him to turn the key he hadn’t even seen.

“Look at this room,” Finn says, turning him with a hand on his arm then letting go. Poe’s feet follow him automatically over an acre of soft carpet to windows draped with a fabric that shimmers blue green in the daylight. Between the two windows is a vast carved bed of polished wood.

Poe shrugs out of his jacket, determinedly peels off his sweater, and Finn’s coming to meet him, stepping in close with hands gentle on his hips.

“If you wanna go to bed to, you know, to _sleep_ , we can do that too,” he says softly, because Finn always notices everything.

“I wanna do that later, sure,” Poe says, starts to unbutton his shirt without breaking eye contact. “I’ll level with you buddy: it’s been a really long time since I last did this and I’m kinda nervous, but I really really wanna do it now. If you do.”

He is _not_ going to get what he wants within reach and mess it up now.

Finn’s thumb is resting just above his belt, tracing a tiny nervous motion on his bare skin, and even that is enough to make his breath catch.

“Yeah, I definitely do,” says Finn. “I really do.”

A lot of the first times Poe has had with people have been really fast. A lightning expression of desire, no sooner felt than acted on. But this thing between him and Finn on the first day after the revolution is slow, their own private transformational state between what they already are and have been to each other, and what more they can be. Slow like a plant growing towards the light, hands like tendrils discovering the shape of each other under their clothes, the texture of hair and skin; the taste of kisses. A gradual slide of natural subsidence, down to the bed.

Tangled together, Finn slides one hand down the back of Poe’s pants, palm so warm on bare skin that he gasps into Finn’s kisses.

“This ok?” Finn mutters against his mouth. He must know that it is, from the way Poe’s panting, undone in his arms, pressing closer and closer until there’s no closer to come. But he’s being careful.

“Yeah, yeah,” Poe’s breathless already. “Keep going.”

Finn can’t, though. A belt and work pants only have so much give in them.

“Take these off?” Finn asks.

Poe kneels up to undo his pants, dizzy with the deliberateness of it, of unclasping his belt, opening button and zipper with the express purpose of letting Finn touch him, of _sex_ with Finn. A new world that he’s choosing. Finn is stretched out under him, shirt open, cock visibly hard in his pants. He’s still wearing the Resistance issue clothes that Poe had to find for him that first day he woke up, half a lifetime ago.

He groans when Poe touches him through his trousers, feeling the shape of his cock, the thickness of it; hisses, “Yes,” when Poe unbuttons him. Raises his hips to help when Poe tugs his pants off, curling one knee up and then the other to wriggle out of them. Naked, he lies back down again, impossibly beautiful. Irresistible.

Poe wants two things, separate but connected.

For himself, he wants Finn’s cock in his mouth, stretch his lips around the weight and thickness as it slides right to the back of his throat. That’s for him. And for Finn, everything. To make him feel good, better than he’s ever felt, better than slipping into the heat of that underground spring; to hear him gasp and moan in pleasure.

Finn’s being careful so Poe is too: leans forward so slowly, flower following the sun. Runs his hands up Finn’s bare thighs, making him shiver; kisses his belly, soft skin and wiry hair over hard muscle, trembling everywhere Poe touches him. Says with his hands and his mouth and his whole body what he hasn’t found words for yet.

All his senses are nothing but Finn: everything else falls away, left behind as Poe relaxes his jaw to take him deeper, right to the back of his throat. So thick, so hard, salt slick taste of him driving everything else away. Finn’s breathing hard, his hands moving over Poe’s shoulders then brushing the hair out of his face in a gesture of such tenderness that tears spring to his eyes. They’re at war, they’re heroes of the revolution, and Finn touching his hair is what finally makes Poe Dameron cry.

He ignores Finn’s choked off warning as he comes, lets his cock jerk and fill his mouth. Half gags but hides it, swallowing what he can and letting the rest drip down his chin; letting Finn’s thumb wipe it away.

He can’t bear to move away and Finn doesn’t push him off so he stays, on his knees in between Finn’s spread legs, his face resting low on Finn’s belly, hand drawing aftershocks out of him with light touches until Finn finally does move. Rolls them over in one fluid motion so that Poe’s sprawled on his back on the sheets, Finn kneeling over him.

“Can I do that to you?” His eyes are very bright, his whole face alive with happiness. He has one hand on Poe’s knee, the other on the open fly of Poe’s pants, not quite touching his cock. He can do whatever he wants, and Poe will come in 30 seconds flat and thank him for it.

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I would love that,” Poe tells him.

His whole body thrums in anticipation and he wants to smile at Finn, encourage him, leave him in no doubt how much he wants this, but his face won’t cooperate. He doesn’t have any smiles for Finn right now, so he guides Finn’s hand lower to close around his erection and arches into the touch.

It would have been easier if Poe had gotten undressed when he was supposed to, because now Finn has to move back while he shimmies out of his pants, risk a flailing foot in the face as he tries to help. Easier just to go still, let Finn pull him out of the last of his clothes, and focus on the feel of those strong hands pushing his knees apart, the shocking heat of Finn’s mouth on his erection. He distantly hears himself letting out a high, breathless moan, tries to keep his hips still as Finn takes him to the root.

It’s been months and months and months since anybody touched him; even longer since anyone touched him like this, like it was important that it was good for him. Everybody he’s ever made love to, everybody who ever fucked him just to pass the time or because they really wanted him, they’re all dead now. The same must be true for Finn. It’s just the two of them and what they do together to feel good, to find joy where they can in a galaxy with precious little joy left in it. But here there is some. Here there is.

“Finn, Finn – that’s so good, you’re amazing, I – this is gonna be over really quick - ” Poe gasps out. He doesn’t want to come right away but he knows he’s going to, too tired and emotional to put up any barriers.

Finn gives a muffled sound of understanding around his cock, presses one wet finger against his opening and that’s all it takes: Poe’s bucking and crying out hoarsely, riding out his orgasm with knees clamped around Finn’s ribs.

A wave of intense pleasure carries him away, the pure physical delight washing over all the darkness he’s lived through, smoothing the first jagged edges of defeat.

It will come back; of course it will come back, but there’s no need to dwell on it now. Rare sunshine spills into this room, and Poe’s eyes are wet when he blinks up at Finn.

A lot of things change in a revolution.

* * *

 

Poe clings to him, panting, trembling slightly. All of his body pressed against all of Finn’s.

Finn holds him close, kisses his hair, traces circles on his arm, and then without warning Poe’s asleep. Suddenly and completely, arms that were tight around Finn gone limp, his breathing deep and slow. Finn pulls the sheet up over him and sits there, gazing at him. Poe’s sprawled on his back, one hand resting in the centre of his chest, the ring he wears around his neck resting on his collarbone. For weeks and weeks Finn has slept next to him, but under layers of clothes and blankets in that icy room all he ever saw was a tangle of curls, the line of his brow, long lashes on his cheek, if he came in close. Now here is every line and angle, unhidden. Golden skin and hard muscle, and his face relaxed in sleep: younger, somehow.

He ought to sleep too, but joy bubbles up and overflows, bounces around in the bright day with Poe as its focal point, and if he lies down he’ll only lie awake.

The sex Finn had before this had always been simple. A physical exchange between two people wanting the same thing; pleasant, pleasurable, governed by clear parameters. Troop cohesion was encouraged, individual attachments discouraged. Everyone slept in his own cubicle, away from the messy sounds of another person’s breathing, from what they might murmur in their sleep. You achieved release, and you left.

This thing he’s started with Poe is anything but simple. He’s never felt so overwhelmed by sex before, like it was more than the sum of their bodies together. A symbol of some other form of connection: a route to it, a sign that it has already happened; both at once. They’ve done it but he hasn’t left and he won’t be leaving. Where Poe Dameron goes now, Finn will follow. And where he goes, he hopes Poe will follow. He cut all his ties when he fled the First Order, a clean slate; and now he’s willingly entangling himself again, a commitment chosen of his own free will.

Poe’s a complicated man. Finn doesn’t know him well yet, but he knows that. He knows there’s a bright, sincere surface, and something dark and just as sincere underneath. He’s felt the weight of it, next to Poe in the dark, a cloud expressed in half-words, uneasy sleep. What Poe might have learned about him all those nights, he has no idea. He doesn’t think he hides much. He loves Poe; he’s in love with Poe. It must be obvious.

The comm link trills five times before Rey answers it. A calm “Yes?” that tells him everything is alright.

“Rey, it’s me,” he doesn’t quite whisper.

 _“Finn,”_ she says, a private, pleased syllable just for him. “I wondered where you were.”

“In one of the bedrooms in the governor’s palace.”

“Me too, isn’t it amazing? It’s so warm!” A pause. “Is…everything alright? Where’s Poe? Are you with him?”

“Yeah, he’s here. He’s asleep. Rey, we - ” vocabulary fails him. He has no verb for what they did together. There aren’t any words that cover the extent of his feelings. “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m calling you. I should let you get some rest.”

“Did you – did you two sleep together?” and that will do, for now. The intimacy, vulnerability of sleep is a useful proxy for what they really did.

“Yeah,” he confesses, the word an exhale with all the weight of new happiness behind it. “Yeah, we did.”

“And that’s…good, isn’t it? You sound like it’s good.”

“Yeah. Yeah. It is. It really is,” the sound of his smile brightens his voice, carries it all the way to Rey. “I just wanted to tell someone. Tell you. I don’t know why.”

“I’m glad you told me. I’m glad you did it.” She laughs. “I haven’t, with anybody. Should I?”

“What, right now? Who?”

“No, not right now! Later. Someday. I don’t know who.”

“Yeah, I think you should. It’s - yeah.”

“Alright. Poe wouldn’t want you to tell me anything specific about _you_ , but you can – I don’t know, give me the beginners’ guide.”

“I’m not a beginner,” Finn tries, but he can’t keep a straight face and even over the comm she can hear the laugh in his voice. “I’m an _expert._ ”

“Oh, I see how it is, one successful revolution and you’re an expert at everything now?” she teases.

“Yep, that’s how it is.”

“Well, even experts need to sleep. You know, actual sleep. Go to bed, and you can show off to me some more this evening, alright?”

“Alright. Yeah. I’ll see you this evening, Rey.”

The echo of her laughter is the last thing he hears as he closes the channel.

Finn slides under the sheet next to Poe, careful as he can be, but Poe stirs anyway. Mutters something in his sleep and turns on his side. Finn curls in close, puts his arm around him and lies there in the daylight remembering Rey’s laugh, forehead pressed to the nape of Poe’s neck.

He’s getting turned on again, lets himself move slowly against Poe, rub his swelling erection against the curve of his ass.

Poe seems to undulate against him, presses closer for more friction, rocks them together for long minutes until he murmurs in a sleep-rough voice, “I am _totally_ down with what you’re suggesting here buddy, but you gotta let me up to pee first.”

Finn huffs a laugh into his hair and reluctantly unwinds himself from the terrible temptation of Poe’s body, openly watches as Poe crosses the room, naked, to the private fresher.

Finn lies back, listens to the sound of water running, and can’t quite believe it’s real.

“They definitely got hot water here,” Poe calls out, then he pauses coming out of the door to the fresher, a question in the way he stands. “And look what else they got.”

He throws something, and launches himself back into bed without waiting to see if Finn catches it. Which he doesn’t: they have to hunt for it in the pillows and it’s Poe who finds it. Presses what turns out to be an unopened tube of slick into Finn’s hand, an unspoken invitation.

“If you want to, that is,” Poe says softly, sliding back into his arms like a revelation. “I like it both ways. Whatever you want. Only if you want.”

Finn does want. More than anything else.

They end up with Poe straddling him, biting his lip and pressing down for more as Finn opens him up with slick fingers. Feels his body relaxing, letting him in and offering him everything. Poe never takes his eyes off Finn’s face, encouraging him with broken-off gasps and then asking for more, deeper.

“Like that, like that, yeah yeah yeah,” he mutters, and Finn knows he’s being clumsy, his hands are shaking and there’s lube everywhere, but Poe wants this _so much_.

“Next time I wanna see,” Finn tells him, drunk on the way Poe is riding his fingers, fucking himself. “I wanna be able to see you open up for me…”

Poe groans, leans down to kiss him, the ring around Poe’s neck a brief cool spot on his skin until it warms with their body heat.

“Do it now or I’m gonna come already,” he says, and Finn blindly slicks up his cock, presses it up against Poe’s hole and guides him down on to it.

First he slides just the tip inside, making them both gasp, drawing out the moment for as long as he can. Overwhelmed with the way Poe’s body is stretching, letting him in. Then he can’t wait any longer, pulls Poe steadily down and down and down, aware of every slick millimetre as Poe takes him deeper and deeper, right to the root. He nearly loses it and shoots as soon as he’s inside, has to grip Poe’s hips to keep him still. Pulls his knees up for leverage so he’s the one controlling the pace: Poe’s already gone, desperate to ride him and trying to sit deeper on his cock.

“Don’t move yet,” Finn pants out, trying to get used to all that tight velvet heat, Poe above him with his expression as open as his body. He’s not hiding anything now, not how much he likes it or how much he needs it, letting Finn see everything. His heart right there under the skin, the pulse beating in his throat.

Poe holds still, thrumming with tension. Lets Finn breathe, come down from the edge until he’s got himself under control to start to rock up, tender and aching for him.

It isn’t going to last, everything too hot and tight and slick, too intense. Finn can’t look away from Poe’s face, watches every roll of his hips translated into half-closed eyes, slack mouth, soft sounds of pleasure. An illusion of closeness and the real thing – he doesn’t know Poe any better now just because they’re making love, just because his cock’s inside him; but also he _does_. He knows how badly Poe wants him, has wanted him. Chose to do precisely _this_ with him, fit their bodies together in this way, see each other.

He sees Poe’s face when orgasm sweeps over him, making him clench and shoot all over Finn’s chest, Finn’s cock still deep inside him.

And Poe sees him when he bucks up three, four, five times into that clutching tightness, his spine gone liquid with pleasure, and comes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, Rey getting a nosebleed after using the Force *is* like Eleven from Stranger Things, but I didn't realise till after I'd written it and I'd say they're usefully comparable characters, aren't they?  
> And a note on Finn & Poe getting it on in a palace: when I was 15, a girl I knew at school accused me of having a "big white bed" fantasy idea of sex, (sex which neither of us was having) to which I ought to have replied, "what, you *want* to get it on in the toilets at Burger King or something?" but alas. Galacticproportions wisely counselled me to tune down the luxury a bit, and I did, a bit, but if there's still too much, blame that girl at school when I was 15. Characters I love get to live out their fairytale castle spiritually uplifting, life-affirming sex fantasies, and I will not apologise for my art.


	4. Epilogue

 

The uprising on Ikut was all over the holonews that day, and Leia can’t reach anybody so that’s all the information she has. The First Order affiliated stations are saying the insurgents have been totally crushed, and the independents are showing First Order ships floating strangely in orbit and scenes of wild jubilation on the ground. Lando’s people don’t have anybody there, so until her call goes through it’s just hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

Leia’s sixth call goes through, and a face she doesn’t recognise appears, blinking at her. Behind them she can see polished stone, a sweeping staircase shimmering with broken duraglass and something in the air that seems to sparkle.

“Heyyyyyyy,” the face says. “We did it!”

“This is General Leia Organa,” she says. “Princess Leia Organa. I need to reach Commander Poe Dameron, urgently. Can you locate him for me?”

The face frowns. “Uhh…I think he’s sleeping.”

The sound of cheering reaches the speaker; they turn, raise a bottle, yell out a wordless cry of triumph and the sound swells in response.

“Call back later, yeah?” the person says, and the image disconnects.

Lando doesn’t try very hard not to laugh.

The next person to answer seems less drunk, and she agrees readily enough to look for Poe. Or Rey, or Finn, or Rose.

“I saw him with Finn earlier, but I think he’s asleep now. Everyone’s been up for two days. I’ll go and look.”

Less drunk maybe, but not sober enough to pause the damn holo while she searches what appears to be the governor’s palace. Instead the woman clutches the receiver unit and sets off gamely into a scene of mild chaos.

Here Leia sees blast marks on the carved pillars, there a chandelier has come crashing down and lies in thousands of sparkling pieces. Torn drapery flutters from the upper balcony, along with what might be paper streamers: it’s either a very successful revolution, or one hell of a party.

“Anyone seen Poe? Poe Dameron?” she yells into a dark room, and a couple of heads come up to grunt what sounds like “no”, “shhh” and “go away”.

In another room Leia doesn’t see anything at all, but her host says, “Ooops, sorry!” and retreats without saying anything. “I should have knocked,” she confides cheerfully in Leia.

The woman heads up the gleaming staircase Leia noticed earlier, and even in the quiet it’s clear there has been regime change. All the state bedrooms are full, the woman tells her: judging by the light it’s late afternoon but people are asleep on huge four poster beds, curled up on chaises, sprawled on the floor, surrounded by rudimentary weapons and what look to be empty bottles of Hosnian champagne.

Finally somebody says, “Yeah, I saw Poe – he’s in the last room on the right,” and Leia’s view in the holo lurches as the woman flings her arms round whoever-it-is, leaving her with a closeup of the mosaic floor and part of the wall until the pair disengage.

The last room on the right is bathed in soft golden light and there are two people asleep in the bed.

“Hey! Poe, is that you?”

There’s an audible groan, and one of the figures stirs.

“Who’s asking?”

“There’s a woman on the holo for you, says she’s Princess Leia.”

The speaker sits up, shirtless, dark hair a wild tangle of curls, and it isn’t until he rubs his eyes and leans in to say something to the person beside him that Leia can see that yes, it is Poe. He has always kept his private life so private that she had come to assume he didn’t have one, and now without wanting to she’s almost spying on him in bed with – somebody.

“Ok, uh, just - put it - ” he indicates somewhere _over there_ , “I’ll be right there. Just a minute.”

Leia looks away as he gets up, aware out of the corner of her eye of him flailing out to grab what must be clothes from the floor, wriggling into pants under the safety of the sheets. A smooth roll out of bed so as not to pull the covers off whoever is there with him, and now here he is, looming into focus where she can see him properly. Squinting and sleepy-eyed, a three day beard coming in, Shara Bey’s ring catching the light as he buttons his shirt.

“Poe,” she says, all the warmth she still feels for him clear in her voice whether he wants it or not. “I’m very glad to see you’re alright.”

He blinks at her like he can’t remember who she is, and then his face brightens into that smile that reminds her so much of his mother.

“Leia. Hey. Good morning. Good afternoon. I don’t know what time it is. Is it still Day 21?”

“On Ikut? Yes. What happened? I’m assuming the planetary news has it approximately right, and you were successful - ”

“Uh uh. _They_ were successful. I didn’t do anything. Just talked to them, and then there was Finn with all the expert inside knowledge on how to repel a First Order ground attack. And Rey did something fucking incredible with the Force. She froze the ships in orbit, just - disabled them from here, it was -”

“She disabled ships in orbit, from the planet’s _surface?_ ”

A shiver runs down her spine. It’s impossible, unheard of, a feat that even the great Jedi Knights never came close to. All that power, in the untrained hand of a girl from Jakku. The Force user who can disable a ship can surely destroy a ship as well, and Rey didn’t. _Just as well you don’t have that kind of power, Leia Organa,_ says a voice in her head. _You might not like what you’d do with it._

“Oh yeah. Something to do with joining the power of all the Force users. She can’t exactly explain it.”

“And is she alright? Is Finn alright?”

Poe’s face twists as he loses the struggle with another smile like his mother’s, and now she’s fairly sure who he was just in bed with.

“Yeah, yeah, uh, Rey’s fine. Rose is fine - I don’t know where they are right this minute, but - ”

“Asleep on the second level,” puts in another voice from behind him.

Poe half turns. “They are? Ok, cool. And Finn’s fine, Finn’s great, he’s uh, he’s amazing -” another look over his shoulder and that smile breaking out like the sun coming up. “He’s here, as a matter of fact.”

“Yes, I thought I recognised his voice,” Leia says dryly. Doesn’t add, _and even if I hadn’t, I would have guessed from the look on your face when you talk about him_.

“He gave them all the tactics they needed, but the opposition were ready. Arit’s gonna be caretaker governor till they sort out elections, re-join the system mining guild so they’ll have allies. They’re not safe exactly, but Finn doesn’t think it’s worth the resources for the First Order to come in in force - this was meant to be a pushover, not a new front.”

“That’s good news, Poe. The best news we could have hoped for. Thank you. Whatever you did, it must have been the right thing.”

He holds still, relaxed and at ease in this appropriated palace, and holds her gaze. She feels herself straighten under the scrutiny, but he’s entitled to this. They haven’t trusted each other like they should; she hasn’t trusted _him_ like she should, even after everything he’s done for her. The things she knows about and the things she doesn’t. All the times she sent him out, both of them knowing it might kill him, and he went anyway.

She carried on trying to be a general with rules of engagement until it was too late. Poe Dameron knew when things had changed, when they were running for their lives and any retaliation they could take was worth it. He knew there was no Light left in those people before she did, and maybe someday, if he trusts her again, he’ll tell her how he knew.

“I hope so,” he says at last. “Guess we won’t know for a while. The First Order might come back, and I don’t know if this system has the firepower to defend itself.”

“I have some ideas about that,” Leia tells him. “Suralinda Davos is one of them: she says to tell you she’s glad you’re not dead, and she has a plan for spreading the word about what you’ve done on Ikut.”

“What _they’ve_ done on Ikut,” Poe corrects, and she concedes the point with a nod.

“She’s talking about starting a domino effect, letting other planets know that they can stand up to the First Order. It could help. And there’s also Lando, who is working on something financial that we could use your help with, if you’re interested.”

Again he glances to the side, to where Finn must be. A wordless consultation, then, “Sure, ok. I guess we’re nearly done here.”

He turns to face her again, and for a moment it’s just the two of them. Leia and Poe, looking at each other.

“And what about you? How are _you_ , Poe? I should have asked you a long time ago, but...” but what? _I was too afraid of what the answer would be? II was so devastated by my own loss I wasn’t strong enough to bear what I let happen to you? My son killed nearly everybody, but I’m afraid he did something to you, too._ All of them are true, and none of them are good enough. He believed in her, and she let him down.

Poe opens his mouth to reply, hesitates. He’s looking up but not at anything, she thinks: he’s trying to find the words.

“I’m ok, I think,” he says as if he’s slightly surprised to find it true. “There’s some things we should talk about, maybe, uh, you and me. But I’m ok.”

“Alright. Good. I’m glad.” His eyes meet hers and she holds his gaze. Takes a deep breath and adds: “And I’m sorry, too, Poe. I’m sorry for - everything.”

They’re past that, of course. Nothing she can say will make it alright, but maybe he wants to hear it anyway. More than she wants to hear what he has to tell her, but she’ll listen anyway.

Poe rubs his hand across his face.

“Yeah, huh?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

He’s still looking at her like there ought to be more, and he’s right, but she finds herself tongue tied like a girl, not knowing what else to say to him. Has it really been so long since she last admitted she was wrong?

“Ok. Well,” he offers, stepping up to fill a silence that was hers to fill. “So, we can talk properly when I see you…”

“Yes,” she says,seizing the lifeline. “Yes, we can. You must have plenty to do on Ikut for the next few days, but when you’re ready to leave we can arrange transport…”

“Right. Sure. Thanks. We’ll let you know. So I better - ” a gesture that might mean anything . “Uh. You know. Get dressed. Check on the revolution.”

“Yes of course. Don’t let me keep you.”

“Ok then.”

He looks at her once more, that direct dark gaze right into her eyes, and she can guess what he sees. She’s old, like his mother never got to be, and these days she looks it. Leia looks back at him, this young man who reminds her so much of herself, and her last glimpse of him as she reaches out to closes the channel is his face limned in sunlight, half smiling at their mutual awkwardness.

“I’ll see you soon, Poe,” she says.

* * *

 

 

Finn’s watching him from the end of the bed, half dressed and irresistible, when the transmission disconnects. Poe crosses the room to him in three steps and lets Finn pull him in, arms around his hips, his face against Poe’s stomach.

Poe curls over him, runs his hands down Finn’s back, up to the nape of his neck.

“She’s Kylo Ren’s mother, isn’t she?” Finn asks, quiet, like it’s too awful to say out loud.

“Yeah,” Poe breathes. He’d rather not say it out loud either.

“And you didn’t tell her what - what he did, to you, on the _Finalizer?_ ”

Poe holds onto him a little tighter.

“No, I - nah.” He shrugs, even though Finn can’t see him. “Never came up.”

“Ok,” says Finn, and holds on a little tighter in return.

 

“I don’t _wanna_ go downstairs and see how everything’s going...” Poe says eventually. Or maybe it’s more of a groan. “But we oughta show our faces. Wash up and go check on the revolution.”

Finn definitely groans.

“Ugh. I know.”

“You haven’t seen the fresher yet though,” Poe tells him, pulling him to his feet. “We haven’t experienced the hot water. Ikut can wait an hour while we take a bath - the revolution’s gotta smell good. We owe them that.”

“Wow,” Finn says, taking in the polished marble, and a bathtub that’s more like a small pool sunk into the floor. Poe’s travelled a lot, seen a lot of the galaxy, most of the major cities, but his experience tends to warzones, ageing military bases and run-down transit stations. This fresher is without a doubt the most spectacular place he has ever taken a slash.

Water pours out in a cascade at the touch of a button, and they leave their clothes on the floor to sink into the marble pool.

“I owe you a massage, don’t I?” Poe asks, reaching for him. It’s so easy, the way the water brings Finn into his arms, brings them together.

It’s easy to touch, easy to lean forward on his elbows as Finn rocks into him, kisses the back of his neck, wraps a perfect hand around his cock and tells him he loves him when he comes.

“I love you too, man,” Poe whispers over the sound of the water. “I love you.”

Finn knows, Finn must know, but there won’t ever be a day quite like this one for saying it out loud.

 

The sun is setting when they come out, Poe rubbing his hair dry with the softest, thickest towel he’s ever touched.

The room is filled with warm light and Poe stands there for a long time, eyes closed. Everything glows jewel red behind his eyelids in the late afternoon sun that falls on his face. They’ve been here four lunar cycles and this is the first time he’s seen the sun, like the planet itself is celebrating. Which is ridiculous: it must be a seasonal meteorological phenomenon, but if Poe doesn’t tell anyone that he thinks it’s some kind of blessing from the Force, then no one will have to tell him he’s wrong.

“You ever notice the sun shine here before?” Poe asks as he pulls his boots on.

Finn cocks his head at the window, at the stripe of sunshine on the floor. It’s moved around since they first came into this room and they’ve slept through most of it, but it’s possible that the sun has been out all day.

“Now that you mention it, no. It’s been grey every single day we’ve been on Ikut. I think.”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Poe says. Finn looks different in this light: luminous, glowing. Like the light is coming from him. “Weird that it happens today. Like the Force is giving its blessing to the revolution or something, you know?”

Finn blinks in the golden light and his smile, too, is bright. is brighter than any sunrise Poe has ever seen.

“Yeah! Yeah, that’s exactly what it is,” he says.

Poe holds out his hand, and together they step out into the aftermath of the revolution, into the victory that everybody made together.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE LONGEST THING I'VE EVER WRITTEN.   
> I'm aware that there wasn't *really* any resolution for Poe and Leia and the damage done to their relationship, just a step towards wanting to repair it, so please know that they have several painfully awkward conversations before reconciling. Leia will cry once, she will acknowledge she was wrong about some things. Poe will also cry. I've already written this scene once in my very first Star Wars fic [ Song for a fifth child](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5805082), but now that Rian's put his grubby little hands all over it I might have to write it all over again.
> 
> Come hang out with your Star Wars feelings on [Tumblr](http://deputychairman.tumblr.com/)! I look at Oscar Isaac's face a lot if you like that sort of thing.


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